Lambchop

There's nothing quite like Is A Woman, no, but Nixon is as good, if not better, in its way (orchestral country-soul), and there are big chunks of Damaged and Wa C'Mon / No You C'Mon that are as good.

What Another Man Spills, How I Quit Smoking and Thriller being the other ones I have, and all of them being good, too, btw.

I lent my copy of Nixon out ages ago. I need it back.

yeah, I have a feeling I'm going to get real deep into this back catalog, eventually. I think I've just been a little intimidated and almost a little afraid of disappointment. and thanks for the recommendations.

as for is a woman... I just read up a bit and this record was mostly panned when it came out? seriously? crazy.

i like what another man spills & how I quit smoking and especially Jack's Tulips, but Nixon is what I think of when i think of Lambchop.

I thought Is A Woman got pretty decent reviews? http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/lambchop/isawoman?q=lambchop

the publications which gave an unfavourable review: q, pitchfork, trouser press, rolling stone, spin. quite interesting.

much as I love the 'Chop, I will always hold it against them that "Up With People" was not a cover version of that 80's Super Bowl halftime staple...

yeah, I thought it was panned going by some posts I read in this thread and the pitchfork and rolling stones reviews linked in the wikipedia. just glanced through the metacritic link. guess "mixed" would have been more apt.

anyway, not having heard nixon, I may not be the best to say... but to me it seems apparent that is a woman has some really obvious positive qualities going for it that I find it hard to believe people would just write-off. most of these have already been mentioned - the sheer uniqueness of it, the arrangements (the PIANO!), the subtle use of electronics or whatever else is going on in the periphery. its beautiful.

Music writers are fucking idiots, is the problem here.

So apparently they have a new one, Ohio, should I care? Aw/No didn't really grab me - this could be down to my problem with sticking with any band for more than five or six albums.

I love it. Two great Ohio-based albums out on the same day: the Lambchop and the new one from the Pretenders. Wonder if Sufjan Sevens will add one soon as well.

what's it like? more like 'nixon' than 'is a woman' - louder, poppier?

i love it. its more like 'nixon' but stripped down more.

i'd say it is more like "is a woman". pretty calm and serene. a nice surprise.

Listening to this radio broadcast from Germany from a recent show plus interview stuff with Kurt is good stuff, just to hear him get asked about politics, the initial beginnings of his answer heard clearly in his low-spoken way (fiercely pro-Obama, of course -- and apparently very surprised at how Ohio went for him), and then an enthusiastic German speaker providing the translation in a completely different, peppy 'hey yeah!' approach.

Did'nt think I needed another Lambchop album in my life but "Ohio" is just lovely...perfect for a Sunny London dusk in Jan

To conclude this interview
Many facts and fictions you construe
The dog gives you the paw
You pat his head and you wipe his jaw
He's the only one who knew
(about) my blue wave

devastating.

best band. psyched that they're playing my neck of the woods this spring. pretty incredible live act. that mergefest et they released digitally is astonishing. there's also some tour-only CD they sold w/ the most stunning version of "you masculine you."

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.