Lady Lamb

Lady Lamb is the stage name used by Aly Spaltro, a New England singer/songwriter whose music is a beguiling and imaginative fusion of indie rock, pop, and folk. A series of D.I.Y. releases paved the way for her 2013 debut LP, Ripely Pine, on Ba Da Bing Records. Musically varied and richly poetic, the album was a critical success and helped Spaltro build a devoted audience ahead of her 2015 follow-up, After. Lady Lamb took a more confessional lyrical approach on 2019′s ecstatic Even in the Tremor, then spent the next few years focused on singles. In 2023, Spaltro celebrated the tenth anniversary of her debut with an elaborate box set titled In the Mammoth Nothing of the Night.
Aly Spaltro was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and relocated to Brunswick, Maine, with her family in her early teens. A serious film enthusiast, Spaltro became a regular customer at a Brunswick video rental shop called Bart & Greg’s DVD Explosion. During a gap year after high school, she took a job at the shop, where, after finishing her closing shifts, she was able to set up her makeshift recording equipment. With the owners’ blessings, Spaltro effectively turned the video store into an after-hours recording studio where she could write and experiment freely. In 2007, using the name Lady Lamb the Beekeeper, she began releasing some of these recordings, packaging them with her own artwork and selling them at a local record store. A year later, she moved to Portland, Maine, and began making a name for herself on the local music scene. By 2010, Spaltro was living in New York and had added several more D.I.Y. releases to her catalog.
In Brooklyn she teamed up with producer Nadim Issa and began recording a proper debut album at Gowanus studio Let Em In Music. The result was 2013′s Ripely Pine, a defining collection that collated her early years with many songs dating back to her teens. Released by New York indie Ba Da Bing, its blend of personal introspection, textured indie rock, and yearning folk songs struck a chord with listeners and critics alike. Spaltro’s first widely distributed release, the album earned enthusiastic reviews and led to extensive touring in the United States, Europe, and the United Kingdom.
Harnessing her newfound momentum, she jumped to Mom + Pop Records and dropped the Beekeeper from her name for her follow-up. Co-produced with Issa, 2015′s After was a visceral set that expanded Spaltro’s instrumental palette with its collision of fuzzy rock and chamber pop elements. It also garnered more mainstream attention, landing on the Billboard rock, independent, and Heatseekers albums charts. She followed it in late 2016 with the vulnerable Tender Warriors Club EP. For her next full-length, Lady Lamb returned to Ba Da Bing and released 2019′s self-produced, inward-looking Even in the Tremor.
Heading into the next decade, Spaltro maintained a schedule of smaller releases, offering the nostalgic 2020 single “Arizona” and the propulsive “We’ve Got a Good Thing Going.” Two more one-off singles, “Ivy” and “Wolves of My Want,” appeared in 2022. The following year marked the tenth anniversary of Ripely Pine, and Spaltro celebrated with an extensive box set centered around the original release and copious auxiliary tracks. In the Mammoth Nothing of the Night contained a remastered version of Ripely Pine along with archival tracks from her early releases and a bevy of newly recorded songs written during the Ripely Pine era. ~ Mark Deming & Timothy Monger