Thriller

by

Lambchop

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this was my first lambchop album and i still rate it very highly. you can hear the soul influence start to creep into the songs. lambchop are no simple country band - they are an amalgm of chiming guitars and lush horn sections complimented by kurt wagner's charming (yet sometimes offkey) swoon. the slower atmospheric songs possess that great build up before they softly explode, backed by layers of sweet feedback and tinges of traditional country i.e. the lazy front-porch slide guitar.

interestingly, the band choose to cover f.m cornog's one man band 'east river pipe' also on merge records. the melodies are smooth and refreshing - this is a feast for the senses. lambchop are comparable, in contemporary terms, to the latest work of the tindersticks, with less emphasis on string orchestration. it's that whole soul flavour - the curtis mayfield homage. i've actually got the version with 3 bonus tracks, all of which were singles preceding the release of the album, and it is in these tracks that wagner's humour really shines through. by the way, seeing wagner solo last year was one of the most innovative performances i've seen. he just sat there with his beat-up old guitar and a tape recorder, and he played stripped back versions of the lush songs with pre-recorded ambient noise. this band, and album is breathtakingly original and sumptuous - a feast of sweet atmosphere. i recommend it highly.

Lambchop's first two albums "I Hope You're Sitting Down" and the even more downbeat "How I Quit Smoking" were masterpieces that to say the least, were very difficult to live up to.

Their third album "Thriller" (showing their satirical sense given their tiny audience at the time) fails on the whole to live up to any of the beautiful chamber-folk of their first two masterpieces. The rhythms, in contrast to the sparse, almost goth-like drums on Lambchop's previous releases, are dense and very much akin to the Philly soul of the 1970s, most notably on "Your ******* Sunny Day" and "Hey, Where's Your Girl" where the once beautiful orchestration really becomes too caught up in itself - even if it is still worth listening to owing to Wagner's sense of humour: he remains one of the few people who can be humorous and still make great music.

The title tune was basically My Bloody Valentine-style guitar feedback without a trace of the melody, and only "The Old Fat Robin" do we see Lambchop at their best: this piece stands as a jazzy, melodic piece (with vibes for the first time) on which Wagner's poetic eye moves towards monastic life - which he is as acute on as anything. When he sings "count the plusses and the minuses" you know how unusual Kurt Wagner really is. The closer "Superstar In France" continued in that vein without having quite the same impact, whilst the opener "My Face Your ****" was the kind of satire on punk rock that the world has needed for decades today. At the same time, the folk influeces of "How I Quit Smoking" are gone: replaced by psychedelia and jazz to great effect.

Despite these three great songs, "Thriller" was/is disappointing. At least buy Lambchop's irst two albums (two of the most unique from the 1990s) before trying this.