They’re a lean, mean operation now, are Lambchop. The last three records produced by the sprawling, endlessly inventive Memphis collective (Nixon, Is A Woman, and Aw C’mon/No, You C’mon) have seen them hone their sound to a spare, gorgeous amalgam of folk, country, jazz and southern soul. These days when Kurt Wagner and co show up, it really is the case of all killer, no filler. And when they’re on form (i.e. Is A Woman’s ‘New Cobweb Summer’), boy they can be lethally beautiful.
The Decline Of The Country & Western Civilization deliberately steps back from their pristine post-Nixon catalogue (with the exception of a demo version of that album’s dream-like ‘I Can Hardly Spell My Name’) and serves as a heady reminder that, while Lambchop have been letting us cry on their shoulder over recent years, their history shows that they’re also more than capable of matching us beer for beer. And then some.
Fans of the woozy, off-kilter, observations of Hank, Thriller and How I Quit Smoking will love this album of B-sides and out-takes like a saved friend who’s fallen head-first off the wagon and suddenly become fun again. They’ll love the old skool reprobate Wagnerisms of ‘Cigarettiquette’ (“I’m smoking/I’m smoking/Once again”), and the unforced pathos of ‘Moody Fucker’ and ‘Mr Crabby’. They’ll also probably collapse in the presence of alternate version of old faves, ‘Your Life As A Sequel’ and ‘Smuckers’.
Although Wagner has a genius for dignifying messy, everyday (and, especially, every-night) concerns and events, he is far from being a mere Joe Ordinary songwriter. Take ‘Soaky The Pooper, which begins like the jauntiest song about suicide ever written, before slowly revealing itself to be a heart-rending requiem that, with its simple gracefulness (“They remember he had said/You’re never lonely when you’re dead/And as the final rites were read/The angels start to sing”), wouldn’t sound out of place on the fourth Velvet’s record.
And then there’s ‘The Gettysburg Address’, a parched and beautiful take on small town American life, that’s like a Richard Yates novel compressed into a five minute swoon of pedal steel and plucked guitars.
“I cough up some phlegm and I wipe my nose/I pick up a few of yesterday’s clothes/I carry the garbage out to the back/Is it Monday or Tuesday, I always lose track/Why did she never happen/I begin to regress/Why does this one mean more/Why does that one mean less/If all men are equal/My Gettysburg address.”
The album’s worth buying for it alone. In fact 2006 has just started to earn its keep.