Lambchop – Thriller – Review

Lambchop

Thriller (Merge)
by Nik Rainey

There’s a word, a simple, single, two-syllable word, and to utter it is enough to send the average scenester into a blushing, stammering fit of disavowal and denial. To keep your eyes from rolling and swooping off the page, I’ll present it in verbal rebus form: extremely vulgar four-letter term for the chiefest aspect of the female anatomy + a usually tall woody plant characterized by a single trunk rather than a series of stems. Got it? No? Good. Then maybe you’ll give Lambchop a chance. Theirs is not exactly the provence shared by most who carry that term around like a bolo-strangulated albatross, at any rate: with song titles like “Your Fucking Sunny Day,” a gently-murmured chorus or two along the lines of “I’ll show your punk rock ass,” and a tendency to push the standard constructions of the form out at all angles (an R&B;-inspired horn section here, a gorgeous wash of Arc-into-Eno feedback there), you might not even pin them down in the company of those who’ve gained fame and fortune simply by grafting a ten-gallon hat onto a slackened frame, alt-rock paper-doll style, were it not for the unmistakable signs: the doleful moan of the pedal steel, the carefully-picked guitars, and particularly the lonely drawl of singer/songwriter Kurt Wagner. Thriller (the Michael Jackson allusion is completely intentional) removes the assembly-line slickness and the cloying corn that have worn this most American of musics down to a palatable gruel by placing its pure heart into unfamiliar surroundings, the plain-spoken co-existing with the outré, a wildly diverse stew of musical approaches (played by as many as thirteen people) all serving a modest, sincere, poetic end. I fear I’m drifting towards the condescension of the city-slicker hipster here, which is not what this band deserves, so I’ll sign off, but not before saying this: presumably, what got us into music in the first place has nothing to do with the trappings of ego, image, and personality, and everything to do with the way it moves our souls. I’m glad there are bands like Lambchop out there, regardless of whatever much-maligned genre they may belong to, with the strength of conviction to strip all the bullshit away and remind me why it still matters.
(PO Box 1235 Chapel Hill, NC 27514)