Lou Rhodes is in many ways an earth mother; a genuine hippy at heart whose swirling feminity and insouciant voice blazed glorious in contrast with recording partner Andy Barlow’s muscular percussive driven limbo in their divine creation, Lamb.

Lamb were one of the great bands; no exaggeration here. Over four albums - Lamb, Fear Of Fours, What Sound?, Between Darkness & Wonder - they redefined and expanded trip-hop into something new, alternately utterly atmospheric and heartbreaking and then a rhumba in the rhythm jungle. And, of course, Barlow and Rhodes gave the world the anthems, Gorecki and Gabriel. There are few more beautiful songs in modern music.

In Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! after Harold discovers Satine’s affair with Christian she sings “If I should die this very moment I wouldn’t fear, for I’ve never known completeness like being here. Wrapped in the warmth of you, loving every breath …” Straight out of Gorecki. It’s also been used in at least three other films. And as Andy said when Gabriel at Lamb’s last concert at the Metro inS ydney, now well over two years ago, “A lot of people have got married to this song.”

After Between Darkness & Wonder, Lou and Andy didn’t really know where to go next so they put the band on an indefinite - possibly permanent - hold. Lou re-embraced her hippy roots and ended up on a Surrey commune with eight other people, four children - two of which are hers (Reuben and Solomon) how a very active 5 and 9, horses, dogs, a chicken and a farm cat called Chunky.


Recently, she moved and that’s where she is on this day -a bright sunny, late winter’s day in Wiltshire. As usual she is easy to talk to, warm, responsive and unflustered; she sounds much happier, less stressed than she did in the days and years around Fear Of Fours and What Sound?.

“It’s all been a process that needed to happen,” she says. “I lived in Surrey for two years and everybody on the commune was very supportive when I need it most. I’d both split up the childrens’ father and Lamb had ended. A lot changed very fast.”

Happily, it would seem for the better. Last year Lou released her debut solo album, Beloved One, on her own label Infinite Bloom, A stunning step away from the Lamb sound and into her folk roots its stripped back raw emotions drew massive critical praise and it was short-listed for the Nationwide Mercury Prize, the UK’s pre-eminent songwriting award. And then she moved. “I bought an apartment in a huge old house here in Wiltshire near a little town called Bradford on Avon [which really doesn't have any hyphens in its name]. There’s greens and woodlands all around so the kids can run wild without me having to worry so much. It’s quite idyllic. I couldn’t have done better.”

Comfortable in her new surroundings, Rhodes is already at work on a follow-up to beloved One although this time it won’t be recorded in a home studio as there isn’t one. “It actually suits me to go somewhere else and not record at home and not have the kids around. We’ve been all over the country recording cuts. And what we’ve done I like. There’s a slightly different flavour to Beloved One which I can’t really sum up and it has a different perspective. It’s gone off on its own direction which is good. it;s off on its won little journey. It’s still very much an acoustic album though. The recording is very honest and organic.”

She interrupts the conversation to tell me she’s eating flapjacks as she’s hungry. No problems. She talks about what being nominated for the Mercury Prize meant as she munches away. “It’s quite a serious music award so it felt like a real acknowledgement of what I’ve done. You know that your doing something right when you are nominated for an award like that. I really had no idea what people were going to make of Beloved One, particularly as Lamb has such a cult following. It did inspire me but I’m not sure whether I could stop writing and recording even if something like hadn’t happened. Lamb was lucky in that it got a tremendous audience vibe. That alone inspired me. That was especially true in Australia where I got the impression people love the music. It felt to me that as an audience it was very open to music and new stuff whereas in the Uk people can be a bit blase and ‘in to this and into that’.”

The phone rings; she explains afterwards that a friend is fixing her car after she found herself driving around London with no tax, no insurance, completely illegally. Next day, she is jetting off to the US. But don’t worry, the kids are alright, her mum just happens to live in the unit next door.

That alone makes Lou Rhodes a little more relaxed than she used to be. “I’ve learnt to relax over the last few years,” she says, “but I’ll be stressed later today when I try to pack. I am such a terrible packer and I don’t get any better at it. And then I have last minute flaps before I leave and the conflict between being a mother and doing what I do. In the end you just have to go with the flow. Life has a plan for you and you might as well go along with it. Overall, though I have to say life is sweet.”