Presumably because the British record buying public refuses to forge a meaningful relationship with country and alt. country music, mainstream success has repeatedly eluded Lambchop in these here parts. Always close but no cigar.
Of course, all you music connoisseurs out there will know fine well Lambchop aren’t really a country band at all.
In fact, despite everyone’s best efforts, they defy any concrete categorisation, their music wandering freely through Philly soul, folk, lounge, post rock and traditional country influences until the end product is truly their own.
Emphasising their uniqueness, the veteran Nashville band opt to be a conveyer belt of musicians that come and go as they please rather than relying on a core line up.
The only constant is Kurt Wagner, his tender baritone and distinctive songwriting being the driving force behind this loose collective.
“This record is probably the most personal thing I’ve ever done”, Wagner says of their new album Damaged, “and as it evolved it just got more and more heavy. It deals with dark and heavy concerns related to deeply personal experience.
It’s a chronicle of the past year or so: the changes and events that shaped where I’m at today, and my perception of those things.”
They say:
The Observer: “It’s the work of an enormously talented man creating selfless pleasure from the deepest personal pain.”
KEXP: “One of their strongest efforts to date.”
We say:
Kurt Wagner has always had a penchant for the most mundane aspects of life. In album opener ‘Paperback Bible’, a song inspired by a National Public Radio show called ‘Swap Shop’ in which listeners exchange items on air, he sings of wanting “to find a 27 inch colour TV/Has to be non working/An RCA ‘cause I need the parts.”
And like always he succeeds in giving this tremendously dull task a sense of great importance, set to a backdrop of hypnotic finger picked guitar, gentle piano splashes and weeping strings arranged by composer Peter Stopschinski who is just one of 17 musicians on show.
Quite possibly a metaphor for holding onto life’s essentials and discarding the things the soul can do without, this is captivating stuff.
There are also moments of real wit to be enjoyed. Take ‘I Would Have Waited Here All Day’, for example, where, under the guise of a fed up housewife awaiting the arrival of her husband from work, Wagner croons, “You’re dripping wet from a midday shower/Soon you’ll be drying off your dick/I want to be romantic about it/But there’s really not much more to it.”
But the album’s prevailing subject matter is undoubtedly the sudden realisation of one’s own mortality, stemming from Wagner’s recent cancer scare.
This is a guy who has obviously been to hell and back, but as he states on the languid ‘Prepared’, he does not intend to share the details “to their full extent”, which is his way of saying we should live life to the fullest instead of dwelling on the past and playing the victim.
For that alone, Damaged is a life affirming experience.
Like this? Try these:
Sufjan Stevens – The Avalanche
Leonard Cohen – New Skin for the Old Ceremony
Bob Dylan – John Wesley Harding
RELEASED
14th Aug 2006
LABEL
City Slang
POSTED...
Thu 10 Aug 2006 at 7:43am
