Curbside Lambsear refuse to settle in shape-shifting third single “Uneasy”

With each release, Curbside Lambsear – comprised of musicians Magdalena McLean and Annabelle Mödlinger – redefine the intentions and purposes of their sound and project. Debut single “Man The Door” was a dreamy slice of twee trip hop. Yet, its follow up “No Ordinary Word” felt like an entirely different prospect. A glimmering piece of industrial dub, where each element from its reverberating guitar riffs to twin-spoke vocals seemed to ricochet.

On their third single “Uneasy”, another shift in style is seen, with the track leaning heavily into McLean's gorgeous violin drones. It seems to sit somewhere between folk-pop and post-rock; its individual elements cohere into a song structure only to dissipate around the midway point. Yet rather than disintegrate, the track instead seems to evolve. A flurry of free-jazz drums occasionally guides the backline as elements flicker into a mesh of sonic clutter. Just as you feel Curbside Lambsear are close to being boxed in, they switch something up. New melodies emerge, the limits and edges of what the duo does are redefined with each track they record.

When I sit down with the pair, I liken their sound to walks in the city. Their mix of field recordings and woodwind with electronic edges suggests minuscule green spaces caught in the middle of big city brutalism. While they agree, and cite city walks and field recordings as an influence at the crux of the project, Curbside Lambsear are more concerned with being a band than any core conceptual edge.

“All of our friends that we're in big ensembles with, they all had their little boy groups that they used to perform in college with, or get little gigs and do tiny little tours,” Mödlinger explains. “They were in bands when they were teenagers and we just weren't,” adds McLean. “That was a big theme of it. We're catching up in that sense because we don't know how to play the guitar, or the bass, or the drums. I don't know how to use a DAW. We were trying to teach ourselves all of that, and letting ourselves just be that band.”

For the most part, both McLean and Mödlinger have made a name for themselves in respective ensembles. Having originally met through playing together in synth-pop nine-piece The Umlauts, the two have plenty of training in larger ensembles, with McLean also contributing violin and vocals to nine-piece Caroline’s post-rock sprawl. Despite their love of ensemble work, Curbside Lambsear came from a desire to try something new. According to Mödlinger, “We both didn't really know how to record music, or actually write our own songs as well, so we were like, ‘maybe we should try it together and see where it goes.’” The result is a project that’s at once boundary-pushing and grounded. One which blends lo-fi intimacy with innovative sonics to surprise even its creators. “It's like sitting on an egg and hatching it, and you don't know what bird's gonna come out.”

Each song the duo writes arrives in unforeseen dimensions, often spanning off in uncanny directions. For their debut EP Put Rings On All My Fingers To Weigh Down My Hands – out tomorrow via Scenic Route – the most unexpected moment was “Avril”, which they describe as a “grungy pop song”. Reflecting on the track, McLean says, “We never set out to go in that direction, like, genre-wise, but it just felt right.” But really, with Curbside Lambsear everything is unexpected. “We used to make a lot of joke songs,” Mödlinger admits. “We’re probably gonna go back to that soon.”

But even though their sound has grown more serious, a sense of play runs throughout their work. On the topic of influences, Mödlinger is keen to mention Dawuna’s album Glass Lit Dream as a key inspiration, which McLean strongly agrees with. But they clarify that it's less about albums or songs, rather, per Magdalena, “How the drums sound on this track or noises, lots of songs that have very interesting production in the way that it goes between.” It’s that approach to influences, their hyper-specific eye for moments in songs, that leads to Curbside Lambsear’s brilliance. A focus on the individual elements of their songs capes as tools rather than genre crutches.

Mödlinger and McLean haven’t just created together with Curbside Lambsear, but learnt together as well. Their sound is the result of an intertwined journey the pair have taken as songwriters, instrumentalists, and producers. Thus, they often act as mutual sounding boards to one another. “We’re really close friends,” says Mödlinger. “So, I'm not really afraid. I value your criticism if you don't like something, but it also pushes my writing in an unexpected direction all the time.”

This openness to criticism, and eagerness to push one another forward, is combined with an approach of artistic sharing over individualism. It’s seen in their live setup, which includes a drum machine from Mödlinger’s younger brother that she describes as “the family heirloom that got us to get our lives together,” as well as an amp and synth that McLean got off her old housemate. It’s also noticeable in their shared approach to lyricism where “the writing becomes material as well” according to Mödlinger. “It becomes this box that both of us pull out of, and people make different things out of, and then we just put it all together. So it's not like that's my idea, and that's my emotion, and that’s my bit that I wrote.” This constant trading of items and ideas back-and-forth to build their songs leaves Curbside Lambsear to resemble not a duo, in essence, but the work of a pair combined into a singular individual.

But even then, that may add an overly academic edge. For all its forward-facing complexities, the disquiet beauty in their songs lies in the joy of creation over any concerns with genre or method. “Sometimes I think like, ‘Oh, should we try and keep it in the Curbside sound, because we have sort of established one,’” says McLean. “But then every time I think about it, I'm like, ‘I'm not going to worry myself with that.’ We're just going to get together and make more music and then see what it's like.”

Mödlinger agrees: “I don't want to tie it to any type of sound. It's only going to be good for us if we do it in that way, so that's how we're going to do it. As soon as you have a recipe, it obviously makes it a bit easier or a quicker process, but I don't think it necessarily makes the most interesting music. I don't think it would be fun for us to do that.”