Listen to “Dreaming of the Kelly Pool” by Mary Lattimore / Paul Sukeena
Stay-at-home orders nudged into May, then June; now they are officially trespassing on summer. This means missing out on outdoor barbecues and rooftop bar hoopla. It means spending another slovenly month in your pajamas. But the biggest bummer is losing summer’s shimmering, lazy afternoons—days vacated of worry and obligation, when it’s just you chilling with some seltzer. Harpist Mary Lattimore and guitarist Paul Sukeena attempt to bottle the season’s leisurely freedom for Mexican Summer’s Looking Glass series, which celebrates “the human condition as reflected through remote connection.” The artists are also next-door neighbors who happen to be quarantined together with Sukeena’s wife.
Their collaboration, “Dreaming of the Kelly Pool,” is named after an Olympic-sized public pool in Philadelphia where they used to swim. The composition is all halcyon days and lens flare: Lattimore’s fingers skim across her harp strings like pebbles across water, conjuring a feeling of enchantment. Sukeena’s guitar rounds out the splendor, floating slowly to new notes at each harp strum; at times, it sounds more like a solemn horn. Both instruments are washed in reverb, and the ambiance is starry-eyed and drowsy. Close your eyes, the music says, and let me transport you to childhood, to a dream. During a time of constant stress, this is welcome escape.