Lambchop - Nixon


Wikipedia:
Lambchop, originally Posterchild, is a band from Nashville, Tennessee. Lambchop is loosely associated with the alternative country genre. The music website Allmusic refers to them as "arguably the most consistently brilliant and unique American group to emerge during the 1990s".
Never a band with a "core" lineup, Lambchop has consisted of a large and fluid collective of musicians focused around its creative centre, frontman Kurt Wagner. Initially indebted to traditional country, the music has subsequently moved through a range of influences including post-rock, soul and lounge music.
Whatever the style, the characteristic mood of Lambchop's music is evoked by Wagner's distinctive songwriting: lyrically subtle and ambiguous, the vocals melodic but understated. American Songwriter Magazine describes Wagner's lyrics as "witty and deeply insightful."
They were the backing band for Vic Chesnutt on his 1998 album The Salesman and Bernadette.
Former bass player Marc Trovillion died of a heart attack in October 2013, aged 56.


Review:
Nixon is the album when Lambchop became the band people think of as Lambchop, if they think of Lambchop at all: 14 outcasts in denim and pearl buttons, standing onstage and staring at their shoes, playing the pro-social sounds of country and soul with the graceful reluctance of indie rockers too polite to beg for attention but too obstinate to shut up and go home. I can only imagine that MergeΓÇÖs decision to remaster and reissue the album embarrassed them, then made them feel humbled, then a little bit cornyΓÇösuch are the old-fashioned values of Lambchop. Where some bands use bonus discs to pump out hot, unreleased material designed to chart the depths of the band's creative prowess, Lambchop offer a brief set by singer Kurt Wagner on French radio and call it How I Met Cat Power. Even when itΓÇÖs about Lambchop, itΓÇÖs not about Lambchop.
Nixon was released in 2000 and immediately enshrined by the British music press. Uncut named it album of the year, Mojo ranked it 10th, and Q was still doing their lists alphabetically. The band sold out the 2,500-person Royal Festival Hall (home of the London Philharmonic), and a Zero 7 remix of ΓÇ£Up With PeopleΓÇ¥ΓÇöthe albumΓÇÖs climactic trackΓÇömade the singles chart. The NME called Nixon ΓÇ£near to perfectΓÇ¥ and the Guardian said that the band was ΓÇ£reinventing American music.ΓÇ¥
Meanwhile, most people in America continued to have no idea who Lambchop were. (ΓÇ£I donΓÇÖt think [Nixon] made much of an impression on anyone over here,ΓÇ¥ Wagner told a seemingly baffled interviewer in spring, 2001.) LambchopΓÇÖs take on AmericaΓÇösly, tender, mysterious but mundaneΓÇöis less a realistΓÇÖs portrait than a surrealistΓÇÖs impression: funnier, more pathetic, more improbable than what actually exists. In 2007 I met a German man named Frank who told me he loved seeing the band overseas because it meant getting to sit in a plush, quiet room while drinking tons of beer and listening to Lambchop, which I guess he imagined Americans were mellow enough to actually do.
Nixon is still an improbable album. The band never sounds like theyΓÇÖre trying very hard and yet every song breaks some convention or another. Despite its showbiz arrangements, the music is tenuous and weird (a contrast that the band toyed with again on 2012's Mr. M), and WagnerΓÇÖs falsettoΓÇöusually the most vulnerable part of a manΓÇÖs singing rangeΓÇösounds less like a Romeo than some karaoke loser scrapping for the mic at last call. He says he regrets ever calling Lambchop a country band, and with good reason: Nixon isn't the music of the people, it's the music of the people who showed up, said hello, stood in the corner and left without saying goodbye. (When an interviewer asked Wagner how he felt about the albumΓÇÖs overwhelming reception in the UK, he said, ΓÇ£IΓÇÖm not sure thatΓÇÖs something to be proud of. I think there are other things in your life you could be more proud of. Like having kids.ΓÇ¥) If there's a connection to country, it's spiritual: Nixon finds its humor in self-deprecation and its soul in things broken and left behind.
Even as a fan, I understand the ways in which Lambchop can seem standoffish and cold. ΓÇ£IΓÇÖm in the thick of it,ΓÇ¥ Wagner admits on ΓÇ£The Distance from Her to ThereΓÇ¥. ΓÇ£IΓÇÖve been a dick with it/ YouΓÇÖll get used to it.ΓÇ¥ Against the sumptuous sounds of reverb, jazz chords, and violins, he sketches out images of drunken neighbors and people peeing on railroad tracks. ΓÇ£The kids out in the street,ΓÇ¥ goes a line on the albumΓÇÖs opening song, ΓÇ£The Old Gold ShoeΓÇ¥, ΓÇ£take their toys and break them, and look at them and walk away.ΓÇ¥ There is no poetry hereΓÇöno embellishment or elevation. This is just the everyday kind of mean you see when you open the window and look outside. 
And yet the secret weapon of NixonΓÇöand of all LambchopΓÇÖs albumsΓÇöis tenderness. ΓÇ£The Book I HavenΓÇÖt ReadΓÇ¥, ΓÇ£The Distance from Her to ThereΓÇ¥, ΓÇ£Up With PeopleΓÇ¥: these are songs that end up insisting that the world is actually a pretty decent place, not just in spite of the banality and clutter, but because of it. After all the broken toys, the disgusting habits, the broken bottles and falling rain, ΓÇ£The Book I HavenΓÇÖt ReadΓÇ¥ ends with the line, ΓÇ£We could beΓÇöwe should beΓÇöin love.ΓÇ¥
At its heart, Nixon is an album fascinated by the world at its most fallible and ordinary. ΓÇ£And of that sweet, sweet soul,ΓÇ¥ Wagner sings on ΓÇ£Up With PeopleΓÇ¥, ΓÇ£LetΓÇÖs be certain the deliberate monologue/ As sure as if it will fall/ Across you, unto you/ WeΓÇÖll most certainly leave the doing, the doing undone.ΓÇ¥ In other words: YouΓÇÖre probably gonna fuck it up.
And yet somehow the songΓÇöwith its handclaps, high-stepping backbeat, and an ostinato bassline borrowed from the uplifting sound of MotownΓÇöplays like a triumph. ΓÇ£We are doing/ We are screwing up our lives today,ΓÇ¥ Wagner sings on the refrain. Then, with the showmanΓÇÖs point of a finger, he commands a line of gospel singers who go off behind him like fireworks. ΓÇ£Come on, progeny,ΓÇ¥ they wail, and together, Lambchop enters orbit. Laugh if you wantΓÇöI usually do. Then, when IΓÇÖm feeling bad, I draw so close to the song that it starts to sound like a prayer. We all fail sometime. Whether or not we learn to joke about it is up to us.
Review By Mike Powell (8.3/10)





Track List:
01. The Old Gold Shoe
02. Grumpus
03. You Masculine You
04. Up With People
05. Nashville Parent
06. What Else Could It Be?
07. The Distance From Her To There
08. The Book I Haven't Read
09. The Petrified Florist
10. The Butcher Boy


Summary:
Country: USA
Genre: Alternative country, Indie


Media Report:
Source : CD
Format : FLAC
Format/Info : Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 862 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits