Tragic Magic

Simply put, Tragic Magic is an affecting, powerfully gentle testament to the alchemy that comes from sharing the burdens -- and opportunities -- of hard times with love and creativity.

Tragic Magic is a wondrous body of work that feels like a cosmic meeting of the minds.

This is an LP that is immediately, ingratiatingly appealing while still having significant depths to plumb. It is one of the prettiest things you’re likely to hear all year, but also one of the most edifying.

The result is a dreamy potion of cascading stringwork and ethereal song, a soothing, otherworldly balm, grounded in ancient tradition but partly inspired by modern tragedy, as the album title suggests. [Mar 2026, p.53]

Those looking for something truly Earth-shattering to rival either musician’s greatest accomplishments may be disappointed, but what they have conceived and created feels far more natural.

Even at their most spartan, the songs feel more grand and cinematic than the pair’s respective solo work; Lattimore’s harp is given particular room to shine.

Each creative filament feels fully charged, dancing across tides of mercurial water. Lattimore’s harp echoes and elevates a time that harks back to a more distant past and Barwick’s synths and siren-calls keeps us in the glass-edged moment.

Both make exclusively great records, and it’s business as usual here.

By turns numinous and spectral. [Feb 2026, p.81]

Tragic Magic grows more involving with each track. When two artists this distinctive and identifiable come together, you want to hear them make a third thing that wouldn’t exist without the collaboration, and the progression of the record finds them steadily feeling out that place.

In the end, Tragic Magic isn’t ambient as background; it’s ambient as ascent. It charts a movement from reverence to release and turns grief into something weightless and shared.

The project hits a bit of a rut with "Rachel's Song" — an anachronistic cover of a Vangelis composition for Blade Runner — and the subsequent "Stardust," whose droning synth line and latent drum pattern ironically also give the impression of the film score for a sci-fi thriller, albeit an underbaked one. Fortunately, Tragic Magic rediscovers its rhythm on closing track "Melted Moon," a song written in response to the tragic wildfires that consumed much of Los Angeles last January.