Lambchop, Nixon (Merge) 9+
Lambchop are not your average southern rock band. Comprised of more members than Lynnard Skynnard ever had (alive and dead), they manage to make a dozen instruments sound like a low key hootenanny. Not that the sound is lo-fi. There are definitely sweeping moments of post-Nashville string arrangements. But they're so strangely quiet. Their first two albums were difficult to listen to. Lead vocalist and songwriter Kurt Wagner's voice was a strikingly rich baritone, but you could barely hear what was going on in the songs. After a while it's like having an itch you cannot scratch. Perhaps it was while they were recording two seventies soul numbers for 1998's What Another Man Spills when they had a revelation - that they don't have to be unintelligible while playing softly. Taking their cue from Al Green and Curtis Mayfield, the band has achieved a new clarity on Nixon, their fifth and best release. The violin suites still evoke a cinematic moodiness similar to Tindersticks, but with an added funky sass to balance out moments of narcolepsy. The result is a synthesis of distinctly American music that is disorientating, thus, wonderfully original. The downside to Wagner's soul influence is his newfound falsetto, featured on "Grumpus," "You Masculine You" and "What Else Could It Be?" It may be ironic and campy, but to me it just sounds like Miss Piggy, I kid you not. He makes up for it with a pair of stunning southern-gothic love songs, "The Distance From Her To There" and "The Book I Haven't Read." The shimmering use of horns, pedal steel and orchestral flourishes are particularly understated and appropriate here. Later, Lambchop explores their dark side with a surreal cover of "The Butcher Boy" and the menacing "The Petrified Florist." The shift in mood could have been jarring, but in Lambchop's 24-plus capable hands, it is merely the last piece in the puzzle of their own uniquely compelling version of American folk.
