Lambchop: Nixon : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Lambchop are making what Ray Charles once called modern sounds in country & western music: They're a little bit o' twang with a pinch of soul, a mini-orchestra that plays with the attitude of Salvation Army buskers and the chops of an indie-rock band. The lyrics, delivered in a deadpan, dust-encrusted croak or a weird, otherworldly falsetto by Lambchop guiding light Kurt Wagner, are soaked in melancholy and mischief. No wonder Wagner hit upon the tragicomic figure of a disgraced president to guide him through the fifth album from his communal thirteen-piece Nashville outfit. Wagner shares a sense of offbeat phrasing and doleful humor with his singer-songwriter friend Vic Chesnutt that is both profoundly Southern and affectingly universal; he figures that deep down, even an asshole pines for redemption. The fragile Philly soul of "Grumpus" and the celebratory, sanctified "Up With People" show him glimpses of it, before the gloom of "The Petrified Florist" and the disorienting chaos of "The Butcher Boy" snatch it back. As the singer says, "It all goes away/Each and every stinking day." (RS 835)

GREG KOT