Julianna Barwick / Mary Lattimore: Tragic Magic

"Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore have enough in common that it'd be weird if they hadn't worked together. Both grew up in the South and found early inspiration in spiritually rooted musical forms that they could transform with technology. For Lattimore, that meant intensive training on the harp, the instrument of gods and angels, which her mother introduced to her at home in the hills of western North Carolina. Barwick's path led from a fascination"

"with voices reverberating in a church's sanctuary to the discovery of loop pedals and then on to lo-fi records crafted after a move to Brooklyn. Since 2019, they've collaborated on various songs and occasionally shared the stage. In 2025, France's Musée de la Musique, which houses thousands of historically significant artifacts, invited them to Paris to record an album using some of the museum's instruments."

Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore both grew up in the American South and transformed spiritually rooted musical influences through technology. Lattimore trained intensively on the harp after her mother introduced the instrument at home in western North Carolina. Barwick developed loop-based, reverb-soaked vocal music inspired by church acoustics and later refined lo-fi records in Brooklyn. They recorded Tragic Magic over nine days at France's Musée de la Musique using museum instruments. The opening track, "Perpetual Adoration," is unhurried, dreamy and potentially saccharine, but the remainder of the album becomes more involving as the duo discovers a distinctive collaborative third voice.

Read at Pitchfork