Her plucky stars

How touring harpist Mary Lattimore has found a niche among pop’s left field.

- GRAHAM REID

Mary Lattimore isn't your typical American indie artist. She's a classically trained harpist, graduate of the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and her new album, Goodbye, Hotel Arkada, went to No 4 on Billboard's New Age chart, where artists like Enya have permanent residency.

"Yeah, I'll take that," she says ahead of her New Zealand visit, from a tour stop in Detroit. "I'm happy with whatever they say because what I do is hard to classify.

I just make what I make." Lattimore's music and her connections are wider than the often pejorative "new age" definition and her classical training.

Goodbye, Hotel Arkada's guests include Lol Tolhurst (co-founder of the Cure), Rachel Goswell (Mojave 3, Slowdive) and Christchurch post-rock guitarist/composer Roy Montgomery (a founder of seminal Flying Nun band. Pin Group in 1980).

Lattimore's credentials are further enhanced by a sampling of those she's collaborated with: Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Meg Baird (psychedelic rockers Heron Oblivion and the psyche-folk Espers), London's indie-rock Clientele, Kurt Vile, Steve Gunn, experimental composer Julianna Barwick, Jarvis Cocker...

"I'm just part of their orbit and because I play an unusual instrument people are curious about how it would sound [with their music].