Lambchop

Lambchop are one of the greatest (and biggest) American rural ensembles of all time. And one of the most significant alt-country acts of the '90s, on a par with Wilco and Calexico. But while the former, at least in their early days, leaned toward a strongly urban songwriting style influenced by the great rock bands of the '60s and '70s, and the latter gave the breadth of a sweeping, cosmopolitan western soundtrack to a hybrid, "mexicali" border sound, Kurt Wagner's band deals in a clear, airy, unhurried strain of country that combines the formal poise of their Nashville roots with a neoclassical, orchestral bent (similar to, though more frugal and understated than, Penguin Cafè Orchestra), thickened and darkened by a strong jazz component (somewhat in the vein of The Art Ensemble Of Chicago) reminiscent of the American tradition of noir cinema.

Lambchop were born in 1992 from the ashes of Posterchild, originally a trio with a loose cow-punk bent formed back in school days, known for a string of cassettes that circulated among friends bearing titles like "I'm Fucking Your Daughter" — which, despite sharing a couple of members (bassist Trovillion, as well as Wagner himself), could hardly have seemed more distant from the refined chamber-pop developments that would define their leader's future projects.

At the time of their debut "I Hope You're Sitting Down" (1994), the group had just completed the first phase of its evolution and already numbered ten members (complete with strings, horns, a percussionist alongside the drummer, the steady presence of organ, and steel guitar alongside the more conventional stringed instruments). The resulting sound is a fresh, ambitious portrait of the aforementioned influences: the orchestral bearing of organ and violins, the country modernism of acoustic guitars, the more indie-rock feel of the electrics, and the jazz breath of sax and clarinet.

The songs, averaging around five minutes in length, unfold across a rich variety of harmonic ideas while retaining an aura of pure, solemn classicism, and the album as a whole still stands today as the clearest snapshot of the contribution made by Wagner and his bandmates to the recovery and reinvention of roots music in a syncretic, contemporary key.

The songs also reveal a striking creativity on the lyrical and textual side, where Wagner, with his descriptive, impressionistic style (the influence of Beat writing is evident, especially in the frequent shifts of viewpoint within the narrative, moving from objectivity to subjectivity and, effortlessly, from first to second to third person), shapes an almost "Altman-esque" vision of Nashville and small-town America: travel scenes, dusty motels with wooden floorboards, sheets wrung out against unmade beds, American cars stuck in traffic, wide-brimmed hats, black leather boots, and the recurring presence of gas, which wraps around, poisons, suffocates, like a virus of the industrial age polluting the lost innocence of these turn-of-the-millennium American landscapes (like the insecticide dust raining down from helicopters at the start of "America Oggi").

"Begin", amid lazy arpeggios, drowsy slide-guitar whines and curls of Hammond organ, opens with a slice-of-life vignette marking the start of a love story (perhaps only imagined); "Beetweemus", heavier and more rock-solid, cements a late-Sixties country-rock mood that easily recalls the Band, and stands out for the excellent work on the drum pedals and cymbals (courtesy of Steve Goodhue); it's little more than an appetizer, albeit from a four-star restaurant, because by the third track we're already feasting on their first masterpiece: "Soaky In The Pooper", one of the band's most beloved songs ever, an ironic, prose-like chronicle of an LSD trip, orchestrated with discreet, silky strings, arpeggios with an almost psychedelic chime, and mournful fanfares evoking a summer of love wilting into the autumn of harsh reality, lying in wait like a thief around the corner of our dreams, murmured by Wagner in a voice that's at once cynical and dreamy.

"Because You Are The Very Air He Breathes" brings the electric guitar back to the fore, riding along over airless, distorted, dusty atmospheres reminiscent of peak Neil Young; "Under The Same Moon" is a sultry, drowsy serenade, launched into orbit by gorgeous interweaving parts, where horns (J. Marx, D. Varagona, S. Chase), organ (John Delworth) and steel guitar (Paul Niehaus) vibrate in unison, and by a beautiful jazzy sax line that replaces the lead vocal exactly where we'd expect to find the chorus. "I Will Drive Slowly" is an existentialist highway song, built on the cool fatalism etched by the sax, on the call-and-response of the backing vocals, and on the hushed, scattered rhythm. "Oh, What A Disappointment" gathers a crescendo of every instrument to tell of a tragicomic, metaphorical gas murder-suicide. "Hellmouth", far from getting lulled into the record's general pastoral, contemplative spell, breaks away sharply, revealing the band's most driving, playful side with a kind of rhythm'n'billy saraband, a formula later replicated in "So I Hear Your Moving" as well.

"Bon Soir, Bon Soir" is the portrait of a down-at-heel seducer, set to harmonies suspended between lounge and bossa nova, where the horns definitively win out over the guitars. With "Hickey", however, we ascend into the pantheon of new country, whatever that label may or may not mean: the Latin-tinged acoustic arpeggio, the light jingle-jangle of the electric guitar, the pointillism of the percussion (Allen Cowery), the hazy streaks of horns, all shaping a moving ode to feminine beauty unfolding in the living sculpture of an unknown woman dozing in the half-light — poetry set to music the likes of which hadn't been heard since Leonard Cohen.

Wagner's literary streak breaks free from the meter of song in two successful spoken-word pieces, "Breathe Deep", the bizarre story of a lonely man who fills his room with deodorants of every kind and releases their fragrance into the air, an olfactory cure for some unknown, deep wound of the heart, and "What Was He Wearing", a spectral organ backdrop for electric guitar dissonances and free-jazz frictions. Then he returns to melody in its softest, most intimate form on two almost (im)perfect ballads, the epic, nostalgic "Let's Go Bowling" and the shimmering lullaby "Cowboy On The Moon" (with the gorgeous double countermelody from Deanna Varagona, on sax and female vocals). Finally, he falls completely silent on the instrumental closer "The Pack-Up Song".

But that's more than enough to light up a long career which, through ups and downs, would remain at a very high standard right up to the present day.

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05/07/2009