Mary Lattimore came to the harp early. She started playing aged 11, essentially joining the family business as her mother was a harpist in North Carolina’s Asheville Symphony Orchestra. Lattimore herself was a member of the Charlotte Symphony Youth Orchestra but fell away from serious practice when she moved to Europe to work as a nanny, renting a harp by the hour simply to keep her fingers limber. 

Returning to the States in her mid-twenties, she became harpist for hire on the fertile Philadelphia indie scene, playing with the likes of Kurt Vile, Jeff Zeigler and Steve Gunn. ‘It started to feel like my own when I had played on a number of records and you can tell that it’s me,’ she says. Over the past decade, a succession of her own albums have followed, mostly released on Brooklyn’s Ghostly International label, on which Lattimore bridges the gap between classical practice and impressionistic reveries, often inspired by art and books. 

Her latest release, Goodbye, Hotel Arkada, takes its name from a favourite Croatian haunt, and for Lattimore it evokes ‘the concept of things not being the same anymore and trying to preserve the feeling of a place before it goes away, kind of like a pre-nostalgia. All of my music is a time capsule but some of the songs in this were from around the time of covid when it felt like the world was rapidly changing and a little bit out of control. Maybe I have a need for controlling the story a little bit and this is my way of encapsulating the time and holding on to it before it fades.’

The album is a beautiful, mesmerising, comforting valediction, suffused with airy vocals. Not Lattimore’s though. ‘I cannot sing at all really,’ she says. ‘But I love listening to the human voice, so making the harp breathe in and out like a voice or making a single clear melody like a voice would sing is my way of singing.’

Lattimore is now based in Los Angeles, where her melodic talents are in demand for scoring and soundtrack work, but anywhere she tours she is a committed ambassador for the harp.

‘I want to make the harp feel approachable to people who might want to try it out and show that it’s not a precious museum piece,’ she says. ‘It is unfortunately a very expensive thing to play but you can make it work if this instrument is really calling to you. You can play something simple on the harp and it sounds beautiful. It’s a fun way to express yourself that can keep you company throughout the years, and I encourage anyone to try it.’

Goodbye, Hotel Arkada is released by Ghostly International on Friday 6 October.