Lambchop, lovely weirdoes amidst a sea of alt-country rockers, are true innovators. Their music might best be described as ambient country pop, using strong melody oozing through lush velvety arrangements of whitewashed guitar, steel, horn and percussion. Texture is what it’s all about; capturing minute details of noise as soundscape and of smart lyrics delivered in Kurt Wagner’s deliciously soft twang-inflected timbre.
Thriller, the Chop’s latest, delivers as promised, and might just be their finest yet (though it’s only eight songs long). From the opening “My Face Your Ass”, which begins with the repetitive Tinkerbell trill of a Disney 45 rpm storybook record, the sound is groggish ambience a la trad-Choppishness. Yummy oohy-gooey group Lawrence Welkian harmony intertwines with Superchunk/Merge founder Mac McCaughan’s organ ticklage. From here, the band bursts into the pop-soul-funk of the second two songs, rife with layers of horn, percussion, jangly guitar and lap steel sounding like a speeding car bending round a curve. The result is pure tail-shaking, grin-busting delight.
Intermingled with primary tunesmith Wagner’s compositions are three covers of songs by E. Cornog of East River Pipe: The popping-with-Juicy-Fruit flavorful “Hey, Where’s Your Girl” as well as “Crawl Away” and “Superstar In France” both seemingly made expressly for Lambchop interpretations. “Gloria Leonard”, awash in all the whooshing layers we’ve come to expect of the band, goes further in creating a swarming sound of dissonance buzzing about the opening vocal line: “Now it’s getting darker, or so it would seem/And if out of this comes nothing, maybe nothing is what I mean/Raise a dusty eyelid/To a window in the south/To see the part of Europe/Has discovered my big fat mouth.” The title track then takes the band in a new direction, utilizing the noise tracks of “Gloria Leonard” with layer upon layer of feedback-driven drone. Listen carefully and you’ll hear a city: sirens, car horns, movement about the streets. After all, this ain’t straight up country.
