Lambchop, 'Aw C'mon/No You C'mon' (City Slang) Released 09/02/04

 &

After turning the world of country on it’s head with 2000’s breakthrough album 'Nixon', Lambchop main man Kurt Wagner, like a man on a mission, decided to write a song a day.  Having collected a “buttload” of material, twenty four songs have emerged as not one, but two albums.  That’s right, two different albums that you have to buy together.  Like good parents of identical twins, Lambchop want these siblings to have their own identity even if they are paired for life.

'Aw C’mon' opens with the rousing strings of the instrumental 'Being Tyler' which sets the scene perfectly – widescreen in scope yet intimate in nature.  The sweeping alt-soul strings of 'Nixon' return, but it is the guitar lines of 'William Tyler' that stand out, to make this the most complete sounding Lambchop album yet.  Wagner’s witty storytelling and mumbling delivery once again take centre stage and give the Chops sprawling and ambitious work clear focus.  “Take me serious” he pleads on 'Steve McQueen', while the cocktail bar jazz of 'Woman Help To Create The Kind Of Men They Despise' is a wry discourse on the age old battle of the sexes.  If you wanted to define Lambchop in one song however, it would be the album’s centrepiece 'Each Time I Bring It Up It Seems To Bring You Down' – “you can call me bastard, or you can call me friend, but don’t forget to call me” croons Wagner before a rolling break brings a Disney like sparkle to proceedings.  Even when Wagner’s magnificent words aren’t central, there is fun to be had.  The albums three instrumentals are delightful slices of light heartedness that bring to mind the soundtrack work of Belle and Sebastian and late period Teenage Fanclub.  Proof positive that Lambchop haven’t stopped evolving yet.

From the title alone, 'No You C’mon' sounds like the older, possibly wiser brother of the pair and although it commences in a like way with more stirring strings on the instrumental 'Sunrise', the arrival of Paul Niehaus’ pedal steel (which although a Lambchop staple is not present on Aw) signifies a change, and from the druggy jazz of 'Low Ambition' on we get the darker side of Lambchop.  'Nothing Adventurous Please' starts with burbling guitar effects before setting off at a right angle down the highway marked Neu!  Lambchop do krautrock, whatever next.  What next is a beautiful piano ballad, 'The Problem' and a lightening of mood and the almost instrumental tomfoolery of 'Shang A Dang Dang'.  The gentler mood at the heart of the album is shattered by 'The Gusher', where a playful jazz that could easily soundtrack Charlie Brown’s walk to school is underpinned by a suicidal lyric where “the water turns brown” and “you scrape your skin with a razor”.  In a disturbing twist, the lyrics turn to a positive “you’re going to make it after all” just as the guitar mutates into a distorted quotation of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid.

Wagner and Lambchop have reached an enviable position, for although there is a distinct sound to their music, they still have the capability to surprise and delight.  This is deep, illustrious music that rewards you the harder you listen.