Lambchop

I'm quite literally in a warm bath listening to this and somehow my shitty phone speaker is helping this make sense: when I think back to what I've always loved about Lambchop, it's really Wagner and his voice and words that mean the most - the warp and weft of the incredible bands he amasses are like an extraordinary bonus; it's this that's coming through loud and clear third time around. I'll happily grow old with him.

"the lasting last of you" is just... what even is that

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Sunday, March 24, 2019 12:22 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's nearly overwhelmingly gorgeous, is what it is.

most of the tracks on FLOTUS just feel like experimental sketches exploring the possibility of the new sound palette they'd developed but with little in the way of traditional songs. "The Hustle" is a triumph of course, and the rest of the album has its moments but it doesn't really do much for me as an album.

the new album takes the sound palette established on FLOTUS but has much stronger and more traditional songwriting - despite the sound the songs really don't feel very far removed from say Is A Woman - and the result is a triumph

Looking forward to listening to this and revisiting earlier works for context. Hitting Silver Platters today for this and These New Puritans, then a sandwich from Paseo. That's a good afternoon!

I'd say that FLOTUS gets by on the strength of In Care of 8675309 and The Hustle and the rest of the in between sketches.

Just picked this up today and LOL'd at the quote on the hype sticker: "Picture yourself on a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies... This is not that." - Kurt Wagner

Just got back home in Houston after traveling in Japan for a week. I had loaded lots of new music on the Nano, but the only thing i listened to the entire trip was This (Is What I Wanted To Tell You) on repeat. It was perfect for airports and wandering unfamiliar streets. Dozing on the plane and waking up to it. The album just gets better and unfolds itself the more it plays.

I enjoyed FLOTUS a lot, but I agree that this beats it easily.

god i LOVE this album, warm bath otm

still quite possibly my aoty

a great choice

it is fighting with copeland and cate le bon for me rn and it may win

it's amazing that this thing is so smooth and beautifully-formed yet doesn't achieve that by traditional means at all. the songs are constructed as if they were overlapping waves, arriving from and flowing out into every direction at once

cw: i'm bringing up rym but i find it hilarious that they hate this record bc i think it sounds like... properly "new" music? never heard anything like this before, and it's carried off so successfully, with such a sure hand

the spin review really nailed it https://www.spin.com/2019/03/lambchop-this-is-what-i-wanted-to-tell-you-review/

Sheesh Brad, you weren't kidding. It's a fabulous review. It gets right what all the others seemingly don't understand. It highlights why Wagner's turn to auto-tune isn't just a gimmick but is taking his music to a whole new level:

"Rather than cloaking or recasting the Nashville songwriter’s singing, the vocoder-style effect enhances and highlights its various aspects, like the sun hitting the same objects in a living room at different times of day."

This is a metaphor so beautiful and true I wish I'd written it.

yeah it's really funny how much rym hates it seemingly just for "wtf why does he have autotune on his voice" when its one of the most interesting and best uses of it as an effect i've ever heard, works so wonderfully with the music. helps that the songs are so wonderful too.

what if you just dgaf about the creative deployment of the effect and just plain hate the sound of autotune? Like the way people hate slap bass and banjos? Because that would describe me and also why I find this album unlistenable (I loved FLOTUS)

Then peace be with you, friend

otm, hating the sound of an instrument or an effect is a very personal reaction that has little to do with whether the music works or not, thankfully there are so many lambchop records that do not use autotune

well FLOTUS had the same effect everywhere too so idk but i love the way it sounds a lot more on this album

FLOTUS also uses autotune on most of the songs, doesn't it?

yes

and i'd also agree it sounds even better on the new one

LOL, I thought you all *were* talking about FLOTUS and that FLOTUS *was* the new album! I guess I'm too far out of the Lambchop loop, sorry Lambchop.

So loving FLOTUS and not being able to tolerate the sound of autotune seem like tough things to reconcile?

(NB I haven't heard the new one yet and am very excited to do so because I too loved FLOTUS but I thought the autotune on that was amazing and surprising.)

i mean i'm just guessing at paul's position (which i find unreasonably dismissive but i was trying to be nice) but it might help that flotus is a bunch of vocodered scribbles and fragments bound by two enormous songs, whereas this (is what i wanted to tell you) is a collection of songs where the vocoder is conveying clear lyrics and melodies that, by nature of the effect, end up oblique and wandering

again, not sure where the problem is

also that "in care of" is an old school lambchop song that happens to have kurt singing through a vocoder and almost nothing on this qualifies as an old school lambchop song

I liked FLOTUS in spite of the autotune (and tbf when I think of FLOTUS I mostly just think "The Hustle"), but when I heard the new album it occurred to me that FLOTUS was not just an anomaly and that "oh, I see, this is what Kurt does now" and it just grated on me. But I still love this band and will continue rooting for them, I just can't deal with that sound

True that The Hustle kind of towers over FLOTUS. I dig the new record, but I can def relate to the feeling of a band you like taking a left turn on a new album and liking it while simultaneously feeling "if this is their new thing I might be out"

yes, that's exactly otm

Autotune isn't a vocoder. A vocoder preserves certain aspects of the voice and applies them to a different carrier, so the mechanical carrier (e.g. a synth) sounds more human. Autotune flattens out those uniquely human aspects and makes the human sound mechanical.

i mean they're not completely dissimilar and if you like both that's fine, but there's good reason not to conflate the two.

yeah i'm aware of that, i read how to wreck a nice beach xp

kurt's use of the technology feels way more vocodery to me than the wide range of possibilities suggested by the word "autotune"

and it's still an instance of something human being exported to something mechanical

Autotune flattens out those uniquely human aspects and makes the human sound mechanical.

feel free to correct me if this definition is scientifically accurate but i wouldn't say autotune flattens uniquely human aspects of the voice at all, it exposes a lot of instabilities in the voice that performance can cover up

but I can def relate to the feeling of a band you like taking a left turn on a new album and liking it while simultaneously feeling "if this is their new thing I might be out"

― One Eye Open, Wednesday, June 12, 2019 10:50 AM (thirty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sun Kil Moon - Benji

xp clearly we're in ear of the beholder territory here, i don't hear it like that but I'm not going to try to talk you out of it if you do!

Just listened to the album for the first time lol, I am very happy for you people who can appreciate the autotune because that excepted, some of the songs are obviously so good; but I just can't get over it. When the last (non-autotuned) song came on I almost wept.

just did a double feature of In A Silent Way followed by This (Is What I Wanted To Tell You) and man, do those two records sound good together. Especially with all the ghostly muted trumpet floating in & out of the mix on the Lambchop, a perfect pairing.

kind of love this remix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2-6PrVDQKc

So they released a 13-minute cover of Wilco's Reservations. First listen and it's kinda just there but will try a couple more times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKBBCdlOCc

wasn't sure of the new covers LP... but god i've not listened to This (Is What I Wanted to Tell You) enough in the last year. I think I overplayed it in 2019 so needed a break. it's so great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzNWfgRFjhY

new album Showtunes out May 21

the concept this time is he composed demo piano tracks with a midi editor instead of writing with a guitar, and it also features James McNew of Yo La Tengo as a band member (https://www.lambchop.net/ press release is here)

"chef's kiss" is pretty nice, a similar-ish feeling to the last album but he's shifted around which bits of the sound feel more and less organic. some people will be delighted he dropped the vocal processing but personally i could have listened to a whole career of albums with it

This (is what I wanted to tell you) was so good that it will be difficult to beat though

really lovely and interesting

That's hit home. His voice is beautiful at this pitch. Not wishing age on him but I think Wagner's voice will be extraordinary in later life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP8SGpb0PTc

fuck yeah!!!!!

sounds like the lambchop discography collapsing on itself

my goodness

those horns!

oh wow