IN THE MAMMOTH NOTHING OF THE NIGHT: The Ten Years of Ripely Pine 5xLP Box Set contains:

• The classic 2xLP Ripely Pine from 2013, newly remastered by original mastering engineer Joe LaPorta at Sterling Sound, on limited edition milky white vinyl, including the bonus track "Up In The Rafters," on Side D, long a mainstay of Lady Lamb live shows that in retrospect should have been on the record in the first place.

• 23 new studio recordings produced by Aly Spaltro in 2023 with original Ripely Pine engineer and co-producer, Nadim Issa mixing the project.

• 9 songs from the Ripely Pine era, often played live but never put on tape / appearing on pre-Ripely 'bedroom recordings'

• 7 songs from the Ripely Universe that have never been heard.

• 6 new arrangements by Aly Spaltro of Ripely classics, including string quartet versions, as well as acoustic, piano and live studio versions.

• Completely new artwork and design by Aly Spaltro with imagery from the Ripely period, embellishing five LPs and an outer shell box, including new artwork for the remastered version of Ripely Pine.


A decade on from the release of Ripely Pine, Lady Lamb's Aly Spaltro has created the definitive 5xLP box set to commemorate and expand upon her landmark debut. With the original songs remastered, IN THE MAMMOTH NOTHING OF THE NIGHT also includes three LPs of newly recorded studio material, produced and arranged by Spaltro and mixed by original co-producer Nadim Issa. It captures the time, mood, art and ambition of Aly Spaltro in her early twenties, who had already accumulated years of playing and self-recording experience before laying down tracks for this giant of a debut record, and the sage wisdom of a decade’s experience.

“I wrote these songs when I was 18, learning how to play the instruments and record with my digital 8-track along the way,” Spaltro says, reflecting on the time. “I was clueless. An emotional wreck! My plan was to attend film school, but I took a year off to travel, which completely fell through at the last minute. So I was stuck at home in Brunswick, Maine, working at a video store, trapped by these sad, young-person feelings I didn’t know how to express, and I spent a year in hiding. Initially, music was a way to take up time.” However, the effect was instantaneous. “I wrote the first couple songs, and I knew I had fallen in love, like I had found ‘the one.’ My first thought when I opened my college orientation paperwork was, ‘Where the hell am I going to record on campus?’ and I threw it in the trash!”

She grouped her first songs together, burned copies on 11 CD-Rs, and stacked them as free takeaways at the cash register of the record store next to the video store. They were gone by the end of the day. “Of the 11, I only heard from one person, TJ, who happened to nab the last copy. He was lost in town, on a trip with his buddy, and spotted the record store. He wrote me on MySpace and suggested I play an open mic night in Portland.”

Soon, she was driving the thirty minutes to Portland from Brunswick. But still as an introvert who had ‘never considered performing anything ever’, she needed time. “I sat outside in my parked car, with my hands on the wheel, turned around and went home. I just couldn’t go inside. I did that three weeks in a row.”

When she finally did play, the release proved an instant necessity. Live performances became a way to exorcize and continue to work through the feelings she put into the songs when she made them. “I wrote ‘Bird Balloons,’ ‘Crane Your Neck,’ and ‘You Are The Apple’ over one insane week. They are the most epic songs of the album, and they were all written in the basement of the video store in the early morning hours.” To this day, they remain her most beloved songs, especially “Crane Your Neck.” “That was the song that made such an impact, the one to scream along to in the car with your friends. I end the song repeating ‘You’ve got to be starving for it.’ I think people latched onto its message, about having passion, doing the thing you’re afraid to do, not compromising.”

She drove around New England for two years, playing constantly, and hitting Boston so much that this Mainer won Best Local Artist in a Boston Phoenix poll and a Boston Music Award. She realized shortly after that it was time to move to New York and begin playing in the local scene at mainstays like Pianos, Cake Shop, and Mercury Lounge. “Connecting with people at shows crystalized my realization that I wanted to perform,” she says. And just like that, the introvert articulated a ferocious stage presence. Early shows were open wounds, Spaltro stomping and yelling onstage, pushing herself to exhaustion. “I was transported by the literal feeling of my voice vibrating in my own chest. I hadn’t known I could feel so moved, and that the sheer act of singing could create such meaning in my life.”

It was with this energy that she set about recording with co-producer Nadim Issa what would be an ambitious first statement. Just over an hour long, Ripely Pine is a ripper of embellished instrumentation, fevered dynamism and unexpected tangents. And yet. “I was pigeonholed immediately as a folk singer. Here I am playing this Jazzmaster with a ton of overdrive and big band arrangements, but because I was a woman with long hair and a guitar, I was Joni Mitchell. If I got called ‘folk’ I’d get pissed me off; all these men who just didn’t get it. Now if I’m compared to Joni Mitchell, I’m just like, ‘Cool!’, but it’s very vulnerable to allow the world to categorize you, you really have no say. I had a lot of stress about how I was being perceived because I’ve always had a real fear of being misunderstood.”

Even with such clear intent to stake her ground and define herself, she spent her Ripely years hiding her identity from the public. She was worried about backlash, or being subjected to more pigeonholing, and it didn’t sit well with her that at the time, it seemed that to come out publicly felt like it required an essay of explanation. So though she had been out in her personal life since high school, it was a secret that sat just underneath the surface. “Right from moment one, I had a queer following,” she says. “I realized early on that my music was attracting a lot of young queer people, and many people who were closeted at the time and have since come out.” She remembers opening for a lesbian musician in Portland whose whole audience was queer. “ I had so much anxiety on stage that I needed them to know I was gay, that I was a part of their family, that I found awkward ways to drop hints in my banter. In retrospect, I was so desperately wanting to be seen by my community.” she says. “About a year ago, I found this amazing article by a person who wrote about experiencing Lady Lamb through a queer lens, and about the innate queer longing in what I do. I posted about it, and everyone in the comments were saying, “‘We knew. We knew” sharing their coming out stories, many that even related back to discovering Ripely Pine.

She talks about this new edition of Ripely Pine with a sense of a mission. “These tracks have haunted me, because they haven’t had a home for all these years. I found all these alternate track listings in my notebooks. Any of these songs could have ended up on the record,” Spaltro says. “This box set is a way to honor that whole time, the beginning of the path of my life.” Ten years on since her debut, Aly Spaltro has remained focused on music that connects and empowers. “Releasing this project feels like just that; I’m able to look back on where I’ve come from, and then gently close that door behind me and keep moving, keep growing.”