Lambchop

I've listened to this a fair amount since January, and while the tracks can err on the somnolent side they're often pretty and well observed. I've never gotten used to his voice either.

Nothing else has ever sounded like D. Scott Parsley.

Google tells me D. Scott Parsley is a Nashville law firm.

Man, his voice has so much personality. Definitely needs to work for you for the songs to come across, but I couldn't imagine someone else singing his songs. The odd phrasing and occasional struggle to pull it all off are an inherent part of the charm for me.

tyler - I didn't know they'd announced any US dates? I seem to only find European ones.

I hope to hell they play here.

Going to see them at the Barbican next month, kinda psyched.

There's something a bit sad about the new album though - his voice doesn't hold up very well (he's had health problems of course) and there are long instrumental stretches where he doesn't feature at all.

never mind - on the Merge site not their own. Playing Dallas at a tba venue!

I found Damaged very difficult to listen to, laregly because of how his voice sounded. He didn't sound well.

new album here: http://www.npr.org/2012/02/12/146594316/first-listen-lambchop-mr-m
i saw them a few years back in boston and couldn't believe how *edgy* they were -- almost scary intensity from Wagner, which you rarely get on record. he stayed seated, as per usual, but barely.

Is A Woman is a decade old. Fucking hell.

Lambchop US tour:
Apr 13 Asheville, NC The Grey Eagle
Apr 14 Durham, NC Motorco
Apr 15 Arlington, VA IOTA
Apr 16 Annapolis, MD Ram’s Head
Apr 17 Boston, MA Paradise
Apr 18 Philadelphia, PA World Café Live
Apr 19 New York, NY Le Poisson Rouge
Apr 20 Brooklyn, NY The Bell House
Apr 21 Pittsburgh, PA Club Café
Apr 22 Cleveland, OH The Beachland Ballroom
Apr 23 Ann Arbor, MI The Ark
Apr 24 Chicago, IL Lincoln Hall
Apr 25 Madison, WI High Noon Saloon
Apr 26 Minneapolis, MN The Dakota
Apr 27 Omaha, NE The Slowdown
Apr 28 Boulder, CO The Fox Theatre
May 01 Seattle, WA The Tractor Tavern
May 02 Portland, OR Doug Fir
May 04 San Francisco, CA Great American Music Hall
May 05 Santa Monica, CA McCabe’s
May 06 Tucson, AZ Club Congress
May 08 Dallas, TX TBA
May 09 Austin, TX The Cactus
May 11 Birmingham, AL Secret Stages
May 12 Nashville TN TBA

highly recommend seeing em if you're in the US -- not often they play these places.

Lambchop is great live these days, though as noted the songs are really intensely played now. Wagner gets really into it. Way different than when I first saw them at the Merge 15 anniversary show, but really great. I am assuming the William Tyler is still in the band, as well as Tony Crow, and those two are worth going for alone.

yeah hoping william tyler does an opening set, or something. his solo record is killer.

Gotta get that record, been meaning to check it out for a while. Live clips of him on that tour are great.

Might try to make the Nashville "triumphant homecoming" show. I saw them at the Belcourt in, uh 2004 I think, at the end of a tour -- really good. If they were tired from the road, they didn't show it that night.

"Ohio" brought me back to this band again. such a great record, hope to see them play in Dublin soon.

I think there are three masterpieces - How I Quit Smoking, Nixon, Is A Woman but all the others have at least one amazing song on them.

OH (Ohio) is on par with those earlier peaks. I haven't listened to the new one except for two tracks (I'm waiting for the disc) but those were quite promising as well.

Nixon only gets 3 stars at Allmusic, which seems rather strange.

don't think i've heard a bad lambchop album yet -- i love Damaged (as well as the Collab EP that preceded it).

this sounds pretty good but i don't think can ever love any lambchop album as much as the lambchop/vic chesnutt collabo album "the salesman and bernadette"

I like Mr. M quite a bit. The instrumental passages are interesting. I know a lot of the guys in the band--Ryan Norris and William Tyler, and Mark Nevers. Caroline recorded an entire album's worth of material at Beech House a couple of months ago with Tyler and Tony Crow, and Chris Scruggs, and I just interviewed Kurt and Nevers for a Nashville Scene piece on the new record, comes out tomorrow.

nice!
fave lambchop song might be gettysburg address from decline of country & western II -- just a brutal, brutal song. tough to listen to if you're feeling anything close to depressed, but really a marvelous tune.

that's definitely a killer tune.

Just listening to William Tyler on spotify, just wow. Such a rich, dense melodic tone. Bet he kills it live.

There are no bad Lambchop albums, just degrees of how good they are.

Added Lambchop bonus: my wife likes them as much as I do, so going to see them is a full family event. There aren't many bands we can agree on like that, so somehow it makes the shows that much better.

William Tyler has made a new record with Mark Nevers at Beech House. The stuff he played on Caroline Peyton's record is amazing and in the pocket. The last time I saw him, he was playing with Kurt Wagner and Cortney Tidwell--the KORT material--and they did a version of Fariport Convention's version of the Merry-Go-Round's "Time Will Show the Wiser." Playing some good guitar. For me, some of Lambchop's stuff is just theoretical and not especially compelling or, to my ears, completely realized, and it is not country music or even countrypolitan. Really just kinda standard folk-rock with some production touches added, not very rhythmically acute or swinging. Just a plank for Kurt to walk on with his little songs. But good for what it is, and there are great cuts on just about every record, the new one being perhaps their best ever, really good stuff all around.

yes! so glad to hear about us tour dates. i love this band so much

"For me, some of Lambchop's stuff is just theoretical and not especially compelling or, to my ears, completely realized, and it is not country music or even countrypolitan. Really just kinda standard folk-rock with some production touches added, not very rhythmically acute or swinging. Just a plank for Kurt to walk on with his little songs."

Not sure Kurt has ever called his music country or countrypolitan, not that that really matters. It is very much, to me, about whomever Kurt plays with providing Kurt a platform for his songs, which wrangle a whole lot of emotion and compelling sentiments out of the equation. If it doesn't work for you sometimes I get it, but I am not sure why you call his songs "little" or theoretical as opposed to, for example, most other country stuff.

Well, Kurt told me last week that he set out to reference countrypolitan music. By which I think he means the strings and the "extraneous" stuff that country used back then. It seems "little" to me compared to actual country--George Jones and Tammy Wynette made big art. Country music is about singing, and Kurt is not a great singer, or even really a singer at all except in the sense he hits some tones more or less accurately. No projection or technique. I'm not opposed to the theoretical--that includes a lot of stuff, from Eno to Miles Davis--and just mean that Lambchop doesn't delve very deeply into music itself and what you can do with harmony, rhythm and so forth. It's all surface. the instrumental passages on the new one are cool, but again, they don't go very deep. I respect what they do and think they have gotten better over the years. But no, I don't regard it as anything but indie rock, and I don't get any real emotional or structural kick out of it. I really like Nixon and the Aw,C'mon records. As usual with me, the English are the big offenders in parsing music like Lambchop--if a lot of those critics and listeners knew anything about country music they would not even put Lambchop into that category. they did the same with Caitlin Rose, who again, is not making country music at all. It's pleasant and ambitious in its way. The new record's "Gone Tomorrow" is a very fine piece of work whose words--about Vic Chesnutt and a European tour LC and VC endured--seem to me to be pretty clear and even emotional.

Fair enough, and you certainly have your reasons, thanks for the response.

I guess "little" means not as universal? I can buy that, Kurt's writing from a very specific place, but the musical arguments just don't wash with me. Most country arrangements, to my ears, delve no deeper than most other singer-based songwriting, but I don't really want to argue that one out. Lambchop plays with a number of things, to my ears quite successfully. I am no honk for harmony or rhythmic complexity coming from a songwriter-based project, it's usually about the personality and feel and then, when up to snuff, the lyrics.

And let's leave the British music press out of this, their crimes are legion.

hee, well, i appreciate the british press' enthusiasm for lambchop -- they seem to be treated with a respect/importance that they don't get in the states. but the writing about lambchop is usually pretty off-base, if overwhelmingly positive.

Oh, their love for Lambchop is great! Probably a big reason why they tour at all, for which I am thankful.

ok i like mr. m a lot. so well-produced.

ah, yeah, this sounds really nice.
god, i hope that arcade fire continues to be a huge band, so that merge can just keep giving lambchop a good-sized recording budget.

fantastic video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMFi2OaXiI8

ha ha

i heart kurt wagner

that is great. can't wait to see lambchop in a couple months. it's been too long.

been listening to the new one a LOT this week -- so good. think it's going to be my #1 album this year.

Yeah, it is a good time in my life for another Lambchop record. Going to actually get this on vinyl when I can, and try to catch them in D.C., though Iota is not where I would like to see them ideally.

Aww WTF, Iota doesn't pre-sell tickets! SO I gotta drive up to D.C. on a Sunday and hope to get in? Ughh, might have to plan a trip to Nashville or New York instead.

they're playing the perfect place in colorado -- best-sounding room in the state.

Man, wish I had a place within 2 hours I could get behind. They are a band that deserves a good room/sound.

Yeah for sure. I saw them on the Is A Woman tour in a very short-lived bar in Cambridge and the crowd was louder than the (9-piece!) band.

True confession. I've never heard Lambchop before. Is this a good record to start with?

Lambchop is such a consistently great band that they've been in the "best album since ... x" cycle since their second album.

I'd say this is as good a place to start as anywhere?

lol just looked up my decade-old review of that cambridge show i mentioned. i guess they were just a seven-piece. god, i was less than a year out of college. so younggggg. http://www.junkmedia.org/index.php?i=150

"kind of" from the new one killing me --
"speak now, love, of your return
it's not how much you make, but how much you earn"

i'd start with the soulful nixon and then maybe the sparse "is a woman" which is their best i think. what i heard of the new one was underwhelming. the last couple of albums sound a little bit samey and were not very innovative. i really loved their concerts about 15 years ago. last time i fell asleep in a church. somehow they remind me a bit of the tindersticks. but the tindersticks have reinvented themselves with their new album which is phantastic but lambchop just don't seem to develop any further.