The Golden Record

LITTLE SCREAM’S MUSIC is–like her moniker suggests –full of contradictions. It is at once both familiar and foreign; weaving multiple genres into a sparkly and Jovian landscape. The title of Little Scream s debut full length, The Golden Record, references this very juxtaposition. In 1977, the Voyager Space shuttle launched into space with a time capsule recording of sounds, language and music intended to represent Earth for, as Little Scream says, “some form of sentience that might intercept it in the distant future when we are the distant past.”

Nowhere is the Martian and sublunary contrast more present than in two of The Golden Record s standouts, “Cannons” and “The Heron and the Fox”. While Cannons conjures visions of receiving signals and painting portals through space over celestial echoes and otherworldly buzzes, The Heron and the Fox recalls a more terrestrial sound while recounting an intense yearning and lamentation of her salad days through a quiet, painful present.

Born in Iowa and raised along the Mississippi River in an “Addams Family meets 700 Club” home, Little Scream, aka Laurel Sprengelmeyer, learned violin and piano as a child. “When my parents divorced, all my mom got out of the deal was a green Chevy pick-up truck. When that truck was dented up in an accident, my mom used the insurance money to bring home a Washburn banjo and the black Fender La Brae I still sometimes play at shows. I spent the following months locked away in our root cellar learning guitar tablature.”

Co-produced with Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire, Bell Orchestre), The Golden Record features Little Scream on guitar, vocals, violin, and keyboard. In typical Montreal fashion, it showcases a cast of local talent including Richard Parry, Mike Fuerstack (Snailhouse), Becky Foon (Silver Mt. Zion), Patty McGee (Stars), and Sarah Neufeld (Arcade Fire, Bell Orchestre). The National s Aaron Dessner also contributed on “The Heron and the Fox” . It was recorded at City Hall, Montreal and Aaron s Garage, New York in 2009/2010.