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Listening to THE DECLINE OF THE COUNTRY AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION, a collection of rare material never previously available on any album, it’s sometimes hard to work out why it is that LAMBCHOP, an undeniably singular band, were ever referred to as country. Such is the breadth and depth of the songs on offer here – most of which have, until now, been owned by merely a select few (if any) – that pinning a label on the band seems somewhat futile. To say the least. “It certainly didn't help that in our first publicity document we somewhat cheekily referred to ourselves as a country band,” Kurt Wagner (LAMBCHOP’s singer, guitarist and songwriter) laughs when asked if the band would have been tagged as such if they had come from anywhere else than Nashville, Tennessee. “Mainly it was because we wanted to be able to tell if anyone reviewing the record had actually listened to it. If they hadn't bothered to listen they would have said it was a country record. If they had listened to it they obviously would have taken exception to that idea. It was a good test to see if the journalists gave a crap.” Given the band’s ongoing connection with country music in the minds of both the public and the media, this might lead you to the inevitable conclusion that journalists never “gave a crap” about LAMBCHOP. But you’d be wrong. Journalists may have adopted a lazy approach to the band’s first record, rarely questioning the band’s own peculiar sense of identity, but right from the start – if more in Europe than in the band’s own American homeland – the media took LAMBCHOP to its heart, and most accepted the concept of this sprawling, informally arranged musical collective as country music without a struggle. But then again perhaps the idea isn’t so very strange after all. Country music’s roots are often traced back to the work of two acts, Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family. Whilst the latter lent lyrically on folksy themes, Rodgers set the template for the crying-into-your-beer pastiches with which the genre is now often associated. His songs were laced with death and disease, misery and poverty, love and loneliness, and these were the topics that regularly cropped up in the music of those that followed in his wake, whether it be Hank Williams or Johnny Cash. LAMBCHOP may not necessarily fit into the classic country mould, but their birth in Nashville – home in the 1960s to the popularisation of the genre which has led to the city now being considered The Home Of Country Music – is not the only reason that they continue to be linked to the scene. Lyrically, Kurt Wagner is never a million miles away from Rodgers. He may indulge in poetic descriptions of the world around him as seen from the porch of his house, but he also addresses – sometimes hinted at so subtly that you miss it the first few times – all of humanity’s frailties and imperfections. Critics may have initially focussed on images of a woman wetting herself in “Scamper”, one of the stand-out tracks from the band’s debut album – so good they named it twice, Jack’s Tulips / I Hope You’re Sitting Down – but in reality it’s a deeply uncomfortable look at old age and how we deal with those suffering from its onset. You’ve got death, disease, misery, poverty, love and loneliness all wrapped up in one song. What more could you want? But it’s not just about the lyrics, obviously. Such subjects are not unique to country music. It is, however, about more than just the pedal steel guitar that sometimes washes over a LAMBCHOP tune. It would be next to impossible to spend most of one’s life in this sprawling city and not be influenced by it in some way or another. In a 1996 interview Wagner commented “I’ve started noticing parallels between the Nashville sound of the ’60s and what we do. It’s just taking a raw aesthetic, adding a lot of instruments and then recording it in kind of a grand way. They did it with hillbilly kind of stuff. We’re doing it with the punk thing that we grew up on.” And therein lies the secret of the Lambchop sound. Listening to THE DECLINE OF THE COUNTRY AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION the punk ethos (in its ideological American sense rather than European musical sense) is dramatically evident. The rejection of conformity that punk values teach is unmistakable. Stylistically these songs are all over the shop, from the trademark balmy sounds and disconcerting lyrics of “Soaky In The Pooper” and “Moody Fucker” to the lo-fi dissonant indie rock of “The Scary Caroler” and quasi-loungecore of “Alumni Lawn (Slow)” via the experimental meanderings (and brief New Order “Blue Monday” pastiche) of the brilliantly titled “Two Kittens Don’t Make A Puppy”. But they’re all distinctly LAMBCHOP. If you have a problem with that, you’ve clearly never loved LAMBCHOP, in which case THE DECLINE OF THE COUNTRY AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION is probably not the place to start. Try one of LAMBCHOP’s regular studio albums, which offer a cohesive, stylistic unity. But the band have never stood still, constantly evolving and testing new ground, so a compilation of music recorded over a period of seven years is inevitably going to offer broad musical horizons. That’s what makes this collection so special. ”I guess the thing that struck me,” Wagner comments when asked how it feels to hear all of these songs in one sitting, “is that there is such an audible progression in our sound. Hearing the various band members gradually learning their instruments and listening to the improving recording quality with each song is interesting from a chronological perspective, like watching a timelapse film of a flower opening. It really is a good example of what is possible if one is allowed to develop on one’s own in one’s own way.” “It's not really my nature to be so retro looking, though” he continues, emphasising the manner in which the band has always worked and which has led to their sound changing so radically over the years. “I am still very much focused on the creation of new ideas and seeing them through.” The genesis of the bizarre “Two Kittens…” is an example, albeit an exaggerated one, of the LAMBCHOP ethos at work. “We tried a three way collaboration between ourselves, Mark Robinson of Unrest and Mac McCaughan of Superchunk, who also happened to be co-head of our U.S. label Merge records,” Wagner recalls. ”We sent Mac some tracks of a little song to play trumpet on, and then we asked Mark to mix it as he saw fit. Needless to say we were overwhelmed upon receiving the mixes. But that's just where we were at that time, coming up with ideas and experimenting and then sharing the results with anyone who might care to listen. We stand behind the creative process and once a decision is made to collaborate with someone then we stand behind the collaborator and their creative choices. Some say to a fault. But that's the way we were back then. Things were wide open and it was more about the experience and the process and the wonder of it all. Taking the fun we were having and putting it out there somehow... For better or worse.” This is the spirit in which LAMBCHOP was formed – initially anyone interested could gather at Wagner’s house and join the jams in the basement, originally little more than an excuse for a social gathering involving significant amounts of beer. It is also the spirit in which LAMBCHOP continues today, even though the chaotic nature of the band has had to be somewhat reduced now that many of the musicians have given up their day jobs and rely on the band for their income. Success has forced the band to rein things in a little though it has, on the other hand, allowed them to push themselves musically more than ever before. But it’s this spirit that makes THE DECLINE OF THE COUNTRY AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION such a fascinating and worthwhile document. These days it’s much harder for the band to release limited edition 7” singles on charming but small Spanish labels like Elefant – touring, recording and exclusive label deals make such activity a rarity. But back then there was an “anything goes” approach that gave birth to a number of highly prized releases that, alongside other now-deleted rarities from singles the band released at the time and the previously unavailable “The Gettysburg Address”, make this album as vital as anything this so-called Country band ever produced. If this is a document of the decline of the Country & Western civilization, then one can only imagine how much fun it must have been to experience first hand… LAMBCHOP Reissues – Now available again on City Slang (07.04.2006) “I Hope You’re Sitting Down” “How I Quit Smoking” “Thriller / Hank” “What Another Man Spills” LAMBCHOP » CoLAB « LAMBCHOP » What Another Man Spills « LAMBCHOP » I Hope You're Sitting Down « LAMBCHOP » How I Quit Smoking « LAMBCHOP » Thriller/Hank « LAMBCHOP » Damaged « LAMBCHOP » No Such Silence « |
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