Six Definitive Songs: The ultimate beginner’s guide to Lambchop
Welcome to the wonderful world of ‘Nashville’s most fucked-up country band’—not my words but theirs. They couldn’t be my words because prior to reading about them, I didn’t realise that Lambchop actually was a country band. There’s certainly a hint of the slurring sensibility in their style, but they’ve perverted the country band genre to such an extent that they get served at their own unique bar. Perhaps the magnificent Silver Jews used to pop in for a round, but aside from that, they happily dance to the beat of their own drum.
Since 1986, a string of members have wandered into Kurt Wagner’s writing room, gracing his wandering muse with an array of twinkling sounds. Whoever happens to be holding the instrument, their task will always be to set dress the scenes that Wagner’s mind conjures up. As he said himself: “Tom Waits isn’t the greatest piano player in the world, but that instrument brought his words and songs to life.”
With that ethos fixed firmly in place, Wagner and his rotating renegades in Lambchop racked up one of the most timeless back catalogues to have emerged from the 1990s. Regardless of what sound you’re whisking up, if the songwriting is assured in its own creative individualism, it will always prove enduring. Wagner’s is a style that coaxes humour out of hard truths in such a fashion that calamity seems like a mere poetic part of the human comedy.
Now, at 62 years old and fresh off the release of another cracking album with The Bible, Wagner and his Lambchop assortment shows no signs of waning or resting on old laurels as they peruse the outer limits of country traditions. After years of joyous listening, I’ve lovingly appraised that back catalogue to date to welcome you all in that wonderful Nashville bar we call Lambchop, with their six definitive songs to date. Grab a drink, pull up a stool, and swig a cold one.
Lambchop’s six definitive songs:
‘Soaky in the Pooper’
If you want to announce to people that you don’t take life too seriously, then a title like ‘Soaky in the Pooper’ should make that clear to people. However, those same folks would be surprised to hear the tale that the song tells. This bathroom tragedy is breathed out with a sigh—and despite the dower end, there is an air of regrettable reality to this head in the toilet bowl tale that so rarely makes its way into music.
There’s a touch of dissonance in the mix that reveals it was recorded in 1996, but aside from that, the anthem evades the trappings of pervasive grunge and abides by its steady plucking melody. Happy to be humble, despite the avant-garde horns, the song never stretches beyond itself. It is just a beautiful little cautionary tale told with Wagner’s signature wry smile.
‘The Man Who Loved Beer’
Once again, Wagner asserts himself as the finest song title writer around. It’s a title that sucks you with an autobiographical air, but that soon turns sour amid the solemn and cosy sound as a story of bitter reality blights the sense of fun you thought it would hold. This isn’t the sort of love you’re looking for in the storybooks—this is the sort of love that makes the four-letter word far too encompassing and in need of a spectrum of subcategories.
There is an ambiguity to the song that leaves it up to the listener to decide what it means but the melody itself is straight down the line. This twilight sound provides an amazing sense of atmosphere. In short, the instrumentation sounds lived in. It barely seems written; it’s as though it just breathes out of the words like the hush of wind through the trees.
‘Give Me Your Love (Love Song)’
Kicking things off with a rolling bassline, a flurry of Saharan Blues-sounding guitar notes then draw you into this expressionist love song. The band then bring further flourishes to the track until it builds towards something like a Lambchop crescendo. Jazzy and soulful, it is remarkable that this came to the fore only four albums into their discography.
The song is all about the power of music. It’s a sexy, sleek beast that feels like the throes of a wonderful night. Cinematic to an uncompromising degree, this is like when Leonard Cohen went and teamed up with Phil Spector. It’s a kitchen-sink arrangement that can’t help but get your hips grooving, and it just about pours the wine itself.
‘Up with People’
Arguably their most well-known track. ‘Up with People’ comes from the 2000 album Nixon which brought the band to a wider audience with an accessible sound aligned with the indie age. Wagner’s infinitely listenable wistful voice added an air of reclined spiritualism to an otherwise party-inclined period.
However, by the end of the anthem, it throws a ball of its own. Once again, things take a rather soulful turn with a rhythm structure akin to Gospel. The rise towards the chanted ending of joyous incantation and sumptuous horns unspools so naturally that you barely see it rise from simple jangling guitar until you’re dancing a little jig. In the end, you’re left with a truly exultant piece of music.
‘In Care of 8675309’
For the most part, autotune is a folly that should never have befallen music. However, it is a note of Wagner’s postmodernist development that he was able to welcome the new fad into his song-crafting factory and invent something timeless with it. The song unfurls like that warming cuppa you don’t want to end, creating its own calming miasma like a stick of spiritual incense.
Lambchop often conjures a mood—they shift the atmosphere to fit their melody. And on a dark evening or drizzly afternoon, this breezy beauty adds a sort of tranquil cosiness to things. That’s why even though the song is almost ten minutes long, you stay to take another warming swig when the last few notes float in from the ether.
‘Daisy’
Throughout Lambchop’s singular back catalogue, there have often been touches of the great Randy Newman and Tom Waits. Their postmodernist styling, where music is used to match the intent of the song rather than just buttress it with melody, explodes to the surface in style with ‘Daisy’, as instrumentation suddenly breaks through the prose as a pointed statement about our constantly intruded modern lives.
Vitally, that technique doesn’t get ahead of itself, and it is simply a tool to add interest rather than a highfalutin infringement that dominates a thought process of a pretty song. That’s the crux of Wagner’s songwriting—throughout all the clever flourishes, quirky and charismatic poetry, wavering genres, and novelistic techniques, the old country mantra of a solid, good, old song is always in there somewhere. That, in short, is the backbone of the greatest fucked-up country band around.
