Lambchop

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.

Hmm. I would say their last two (this one and OH(Ohio)) are on par with Nixon and Is A Woman, or maybe even better (ask me when I've had ten years with 'em).

LP has four bonus tracks. Anyone heard 'em? I'm a vinyl guy but this whole "LP costs more than double what the CD costs" shit is getting on my nerves

hmm yeah would like to hear the bonus traxxxx.
interview here: http://www.avclub.com/articles/kurt-wagner,69809/
interesting that merge wouldn't put out that KORT record, that is a nice one.

OH (Ohio) is on par with those earlier peaks.

It really is! I totally overlooked it at the time but have been listening over the last couple of days and it's magnificent. Such a great spring record. I like it a lot more than Mr M actually.

xpost Spent a 8/9 hrrs with Kurt last month for a piece. He accepts his own fault in them getting labelled country, though then the misguided ran with the label ...

From the transcript (excuse the typos):
I never really felt part of the altcountry thing to begin with - it was definitely something that was foisted upon us by virtue of being from Nashville, virtue of a cynical early press release we made. We were just fuckin’ kidding. we figured they would listen to the music. The someone wrote” “This great country band from Nashville”. And we were haha - you didn’t listen to the song, did you, you just wrote it. You just read the thing and you wrote it. Of course I did also love what the Mekons were doing - another sort of artist collective thing. That made total sense, and the fact that they were fond of that typw of music was a bonus We focuseed on that because we’re from here - it’s aprt of what we grew up with, so why shouldn’t we look at that as part of what we do? It made sense to me maybe just take it from a conceptual point of view and not really use it literally - don’t cover Hank Williams or anything but look at what Hank Williams song were, and how they were produced, and the sounds. The fact we were working in studios where all this stuff was created - we felt a little bit subversive about that too: sneak in on the weekend and work with the engineers who were just sick of working in the mainstream world and thrilled to do anything that wasn’t. And then the fact we were all having fun and didn’t give a shit anyway made it more fun for people who were stuck doing this as a profession and weren’t working with music they liked. They loved being engineers, they loved capturing sound and making sound beautiful, unfirtunately they were capturing sounds they weren’t that thrilled about. It made sense to us to use the infrastructure that was here, but use it to our own ends.

Absurd tag to begin with?
It was the bin you got thrown in. It does sound kind of American - there you go. Certainly the Americana idea grew out of that, whether that was more accurate … I still think of Americana myself persnally as these kitschy things you colelct - old political buttons, Coke signs, things like that, but I udnerstand the intent of that description. It’s about American music or American sound. `it’s not German. It’s not British. It’s an American thing.’ That was a little more descriptive.

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.

― grandavis, Friday, F

I think you'll be able to get in to small Iota ok, if you get there even an hour early. Or you can buy a ticket online for their show the next night, April 16, at Rams Head Tavern in Annapolis, MD.

Thanks, Iota may work out after all, just wish I didn't have to risk it at all. Annapolis is just a little too far, as I wouldn't be staying there. Is Rams Head Tavern a good venue though? If it was for some reason exceptional I would consider it. Otherwise NYC and Nashville have the bonus of being places I go regularly already to see family and friends, so I could tie in other shit with the show. Regardless, gotta find a way to see Lambchop one way or another!

yo ithappens, what pub is your article for?

x-post. Have never been yet to Rams Head Tavern. Sometimes its admission prices are higher than the DC area dates for the same performer. It's just an hour or so from Iota.

I used to go to Ram's Head in the late 90s. Back then, it was a sit down at tables and listen quietly kind of place. Absolutely my favorite venue to be able to hear an artist and not the audience.

I have no idea if it is still like that or not.

xpost to tylerw - Was in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago.

ah, thanks!

Hey, thanks folks. Will see if I can find out any more info on Ram's Head as it exists now, but it's an hour farther away from where I live, so 3 hours each way instead of about 2. Tough for a Monday night.

Also, tour dates are posted in several places. Has there been an update beyong "TBA" for the show in Nashville? I always thought it would be cool to see them there.

I'm afraid I may have to head out of town when Lambchop comes here, which would totally suck.

They were pretty great last night, although I gather this was a more stripped-down Lambchop, only about six members on stage, plus Cortney Tidwell on backing vocals or just cooing over the top. Set was mostly the new album, plus My Blue Wave, The Man Who Loved Beer, and a couple of others. My Blue Wave was amazing.

Also Kurt Wagner was just hanging out in the pub round the corner beforehand, we had a quick chat at the bar. He was mostly ordering all the most lol-British food on the menu.

Lovely show last night, I thought. Very clever using cooing Cortney to take the part of the strings on the new songs.

this band cant make a bad album imo

Pretty gutted to miss them this time around, especially with Cortney T, but I couldn't swing a Barbican ticket in these austere times. Just contented myself with playing Aw C'mon a couple of times today.

listened to mr. m again last night while making dinner, so good. not a song i want skip on there.