Much and well has already been said about these Lampchop on these pages. And the same can be said of the work of his deus ex machina, Kurt Wagner who has recently been churning out one album a year, none less than discreet, all recognizablely attributable to a pen and a context that are very recognizable and equally elusive. There are no choruses, verses or really memorable melodies in the recent music of this one man band that is always a great pleasure to listen not only with the head but above all with the heart. Solventi said it well, on several occasions, about records such as Trip And Showtunesthe subtext of Wagner’s songs is our very existence, a representation of our plastic comfort zones mediated by technology.
Relaxing and interlocutors, synthetic means like acoustic means, with or without autotune, country like gospel, certainly nu soul for that good-natured insertion into the folds of a contemporary fact by Bon Iver coll ‘Heartbreakthe Lambchop songs flow step by step to the rhythm of old digital photographs which, precisely because such, do not suffer time.
“The lights on the stage surprise you, they dazzle you, but they go out after a moment: it is the very brief moment in which you are intensely alone. And that’s where these songs live ”, they said before Showtunesa concept that applies to this The Bible – album number 17 – if taken together with a tablet or two of dystopia, the fixed residue of a present in the fingertips of a personal neorealism.
Police Dog Blues he anticipated the work with gospel / soul integrated with synthetic elements, soaked in the cold heat typical of the latest production of the (non) band from Nashville and corroborated by a sense of electric alarm, like an 80s crack on the cybernetic surface. In the video refer to the events in Minneapolis of May 2020 – the murder of George Floyd – but Wagner prefers philosophy (of life) to denunciation. La di lui is a narrative that uses the news as a starting point to quickly slide it just below the dividing line of our consciences.
The Bible it also suggests another aspect of these as well as many other passages of the last Lambchops numbed by sensory overload and yet pragmatically spiritual, tissues of spirituality made up of gestures and daily actions of non religious personas the bandleader who is about to hit the age of would describe himself that song of the Beatles, but not alone.
The disc was recorded by a trio which includes the pianist Andrew Broder (known through Justin Vernon / Bon Iver in Berlin) and the producer Ryan Olson (Gayngs) in a former paint factory in Minneapolis. Get out of Nashville then. And this unprecedented formation – plus various shift workers – is precious in the economy of arrangements that start live and then sublimate in the usual post-production work. Little Black Boxes it is the most particular piece: it mixes disco bases and spices afrobeat height Tony Allen, shakera funk vaguely Talking Heads with two olives of deep bass. But it is the whole record that enjoys the contribution of the musicians, see the piano that wanders with elegant circumspection in the string cinemascope of His Song Is Sungor the winds (also Mexican-style) that warm the atmosphere here and really find an outlet in Whatever Mortal. This is the most choral piece of the disc, another half novelty in our discography, not so much for the jazz vein (here also fusion) but for the combination of numerous elements, not least, the counterpoints of the gospel choir directed by Derrick Lee that we forgot to mention for the aforementioned Police Dog Blues (which also boasts a lumpy bass).
Productive tricks aside, the amniotic fluid song we always want to go back to when listening to a Lambchop album is guaranteed here too. TO Majork Minor Drag it adds to the standards of the case, but an ear should also be given to So There, Dylan At The Mouse Trap And Every Child Begins The World Again that focus on the classic, or at least tend to that. Around here, Broder’s plan accompanies omnipresent melodies that almost seem to want to capture the words rather than release them into the ether. Will it be another illusion of Wagner the alchemist?
The question is purely rhetorical, That’s Music is the answer and the title of the concluding piece: a sliding door between Lambchop And Tindersticks thrilling, the credits for a record once again essential in a dense and beautiful discography.