A year after his last work, showtunes (Merge Records 2021), lambchop They announce their new job.
The next month of September, day 30, will see the light Bible of which its leader, Kurt Wagnercomments: “I had the idea that I am not a religious person, but I do believe that there is a spirituality in many people and they are not religious. You don’t have to be religious to be a spiritual person, right? You just don’t have to, there should be an acceptance or a way of acknowledging spirituality without it being overtly religious.”
As for recording, in the sultry summer of 2021, Wagner found himself in Minneapolis, in a decommissioned paint factory converted into practice space. Pianist Andrew Broder and his production partner Ryan Olson were entrusted. “Ryan and Andrew are like two sides of my personality,” says Wagner. “And if you put them as a team, they represent me.” This would be the first time Wagner had allowed someone else, not to mention someone with no connection whatsoever to holy old Nashville, to produce a Lambchop record.
The sessions reminded him of those days long gone at the Springwater Supper Club in Nashville, when he first brought the after party into his home and Lambchop was born. But perhaps because he wasn’t the one making the after-party rules this time, the music on The Bible is more unpredictable than ever on a Lambchop record. “And that’s joy,” says Wagner, “I feel like what I’ve been doing all this time. It’s really about not getting too obsessed with being a serious fucking musician and enjoying each other’s company. It’s a social thing we do together. And it should be nice. If it’s not, which I think ends up being for most musicians as they spend their careers doing it, it becomes a pretty sad thing. And when I see it coming, I don’t want it in my life. That’s like, why do it if you’re not enjoying it? This is Lambchop’s new album, born in a new place, but from a process he first discovered in Nashville, the one that helped him find his own voice in the first place.”
Bible It is anticipated by the song “Police Dog Blues”, with a jazzy air and the electronic experimentation already shown in their latest passes. About her he comments:
“During the turmoil surrounding the horrendous injustice in Minneapolis in 2020, I have once again heard the song of blind blake, ‘Police Dog Blues’. It was originally recorded in 1929, the year my father was born, and it seems that John Pelar broadcast it on his show on September 11, 1968. It was deceptively upbeat musically and I didn’t remember it at all. Then I remembered that a police dog is a shepherd.”
The shocking and charged video for the song was generated in the Unreal 3D graphics engine and directed by Isaac Gale. Produced in VR to achieve the most unsettling visuals, Joe Midthun used the Unreal Engine and Visions of Chaos to set up events like dogs just running around or a tidal wave of cops entering a suburb, and happy accidents awaited the AI. “We took the police dog from the song title literally and imagined a post-police apocalypse city overrun by German Shepherds just doing their thing,” says Gale, “White privilege and apathy in the face of disastrous reality. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to compare the police in Minneapolis, where I and the album’s producers Ryan Olson and Andrew Broder live, to a catastrophic man-made disaster.”
Listen to Lambchop’s ‘Police Dog Blues’
These will be the songs from ‘The Bible’ by Lambchop
1. His Song Is Sung
2. Little Black Boxes
3.Daisy
4. Whatever Deadly
5. A Major Minor Drag
6.Police Dog Blues
7. Dylan At The Mouse Trap
8. Every Child Begins The World Again
9. So There
10. That’s Music
Photo: Mickie Winters