(Chamber Pop) [CD] Lambchop - Aw C'mon / No You C'mon (2-CD Slipcased Enhanced Edition) - 2004, FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

01. Being Tyler (Kurt Wagner / William Tyler) 03:20
02. Four Pounds in Two Days (Kurt Wagner) 02:04
03. Steve McQueen (Kurt Wagner) 04:32
04. The Lone Official (Kurt Wagner) 03:44
05. Something's Going On (Kurt Wagner) 02:46
06. Nothing But a Blur from a Bullet Train (Kurt Wagner) 03:59
07. Each Time I Bring It Up It Seems to Bring You Down (Kurt Wagner) 04:26
08. Timothy B. Schmidt (Kurt Wagner) 03:05
09. Women Help to Create the Kind of Men They Despise (Kurt Wagner / Tony Crow) 02:29
10. I Hate Candy (Kurt Wagner) 04:50
11. I Haven't Heard a Word I've Said (Kurt Wagner) 04:03
12. Action Figure (Kurt Wagner) 05:32
13. Pertinent Information (enhanced material) 00:48

01.Sunrise (Kurt Wagner) 04:10
02. Low Ambition (Kurt Wagner) 04:40
03. There's Still Time (Kurt Wagner) 04:19
04. Nothing Adventurous Please (Kurt Wagner) 03:53
05. The Problem (Kurt Wagner) 02:28
06. Shang a Dang Dang (Kurt Wagner) 03:21
07. About My Lighter (Kurt Wagner / Matt Swanson / Graeme Kyle) 04:51
08. Under a Dream of a Lie (Kurt Wagner) 03:45
09. Jan (Kurt Wagner) 03:13
10. The Gusher (Kurt Wagner) 03:50
11. Listen (Kurt Wagner) 05:42
12. The Producer (Kurt Wagner) 03:14
13. Pertinent Information (enhanced material) 00:24

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Touted as "Nashville's most f*cked-up country band" by their label Merge Records, Lambchop was arguably the most consistently brilliant and unique American group to emerge during the 1990s. Their unclassifiable hybrid of country, soul, jazz, and avant-garde noise seemed at one time or another to drink from every conceivable tributary of contemporary music, its Baroque beauty all held together by the surreal lyrical wit and droll vocal presence of frontman Kurt Wagner. Although Lambchop's ever-rotating roster would later expand to over a dozen members, the group formed in 1986 as a simple three-piece teaming Wagner, guitarist Jim Watkins, and bassist Marc Trovillion, former high school classmates already ten years removed from the educational system. Originally dubbed Posterchild, the trio made its earliest recordings in Trovillion's bedroom, self-releasing a series of cassettes with titles like "I'm F*cking Your Daughter." In time, the lineup began to grow and the band regularly performed live in and around the Nashville area, often at the area record shop, Lucy's (not coincidentally owned by Wagner's wife, Mary).
In 1992, Posterchild -- now consisting of Wagner, Trovillion, guitarist Bill Killbrew, clarinetist Jonathan Marx, multi-instrumentalist Scott C. Chase, drummer Steve Goodhue, and percussionist Allen Lowery -- released An Open Fresca + A Moist Towlette, a split single with friends Crop Circle Hoax. The 7" brought the group to the attention of entertainment lawyer George Regis, who issued cease-and-desist orders on behalf of his clients, the noise pop band Poster Children. After rejecting the names REN, Pinnacles of Cream, and Turd Goes Back, the band settled on Lambchop, added vocalist/saxophonist Deanna Varagona, steel guitarist Paul Niehaus, and organist John Delworth, and signed to Merge to release the 1993 single "Nine." Their debut LP, I Hope You're Sitting Down (aka Jack's Tulips), followed a year later. In many ways, this album would be the most conventional Lambchop record. Its Nashville origins and torch-and-twang ambience would saddle the band with the increasingly erroneous alt-country tag, although Wagner's Lou Reed-like vocals and bizarre narrative conceits -- in particular the fan-favorite "Soaky in the Pooper," a vivid recounting of a bad LSD trip -- immediately signaled their obvious distance from the likes of Uncle Tupelo or the Jayhawks.
The lovely How I Quit Smoking appeared in 1996 (although on the subsequent "Cigaretiquette" single, Wagner would proudly announce, "I'm smoking again"). Recorded live the previous Independence Day, the Hank EP followed later in 1996. Marking the debut of drummer Paul Burch, the disc represented the apotheosis of Lambchop's Billy Sherrill-inspired phase, its lush production evoking the Nashville sound so popular three decades earlier, but by then completely passé among Music City's chart superstars. 1997's Thriller proved a major turning point; highlighted by the Muscle Shoals soul of "Your Fucking Sunny Day" and including no fewer than three songs penned by East River Pipe's F.M. Cornog, this sprawling, difficult album introduced the uncompromising eclecticism that would dominate Lambchop's work from here on out. The follow-up, 1998's What Another Man Spills, upped the ante further. On remarkably soulful covers of Curtis Mayfield's "Love Song (Give Me Your Love)" and Frederick Knight's "I've Been Lonely for So Long," Wagner's baritone drawl even gives way to a Prince-like falsetto. That same year, the group also backed Vic Chesnutt on his album The Salesman and Bernadette.
Lambchop's fifth full-length, Nixon, appeared in the spring of 2000. Supposedly a concept album exploring the presidency of the infamous Tricky Dick, Wagner even included a bibliography in the liner notes -- a direct connection to the Watergate scandal remains unidentified. Though still criminally unknown at home, Lambchop enjoyed a much more substantial following overseas, and on May 13, 2000 they appeared at the London Royal Festival Hall. The gig was recorded and made available at U.K. appearances that fall as the Queens Royal Trimma limited-edition EP. (A 2001 European tour yielded the Treasure Chest of the Enemy EP.) The 2001 collection Tools in the Dryer assembled many of Lambchop's scattered singles, compilation tracks, and remixes.
After recording the purposefully spare Is a Woman in 2002, Wagner and company moved on to their most ambitious project yet -- two simultaneously released albums, Aw C'Mon and No, You C'Mon, in which Lambchop returned to full power and joined by a lush string section. The next year, the musically experimental EP CoLAB came out, followed in the spring of 2006 by The Decline of Country & Western Civilization, Pt. 2: The Woodwind Years, an eclectic collection of tracks that had never appeared before on Lambchop records, including one new song, "Gettysburg Address," and a record of all-new material called Damaged later that summer. 2008 saw the release of the typically graceful and elegant OH (Ohio), followed in early 2012 by the group’s 11th full-length outing, the austere Mr. M., which offered up 11 lush, string-laden meditations on love and loss, all of which were dedicated to the late Vic Chesnutt. In 2015, Kurt Wagner introduced his electronic side project HeCTA, and elements of HeCTA's eclectic musical approach informed Lambchop's next project. FLOTUS (which Wagner says stands for "For Love Often Turns Us Still") was released in October 2016. (Jason Ankeny, AllMusic)

After the spare musical textures of Lambchop's 2002 album, Is a Woman, Kurt Wagner and his king-sized chamber pop ensemble have returned to full force with Aw C'mon, the first of two albums the group released on the same day in February 2004. Ambitious, eclectic, and boasting lush string charts performed by the Nashville String Machine (the orchestra-for-hire that has been adding countrypolitian polish to country & western recording sessions since the 1970s), Aw C'mon (as well as its sibling, No, You C'mon) easily trumps Nixon for widescreen musical grandeur, which makes for a lovely if puzzling contrast with the whispered thumbnail sketches of Wagner's lyrics and vocals. Delivered in a craggy murmur and often mixed low enough that one sometimes has to strain to hear them, Kurt Wagner's stories focus on the small details of life's big events rather than the shape of the larger picture, while his music builds an impressive sonic mosaic out of the assorted tones and textures of this 13-piece ensemble and the myriad pop, R&B, and country influences that inform his music. In fact, the album's instrumental cuts, "Being Tyler," "The Lone Official," and "Timothy B. Schmidt," pack nearly as much emotional resonance as most of the vocal numbers, which seems to reinforce the notion that Wagner is going for mood as much as message here. Aw C'mon is lovely, compelling, mysterious, and confounding; it's hard to know just what is supposed to lurk at the core of this music, but Lambchop have given listeners enough fine music that digging to the center is fine and rewarding work.
Well, if it's good enough for Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, and Guns N' Roses, it must be good enough for Lambchop, and Kurt Wagner's super-sized Nashville chamber pop ensemble have followed in the footsteps of the above-mentioned artists by releasing two albums of new material on the same day. No, You C'mon was written and recorded at the same time as its sister set, Aw C'mon, and stylistically the two albums are cut from the same mold—expansive, lushly arranged pop melodies with classic R&B and country accents, often accompanied by Wagner's engaging cryptic lyrics and nicotine-laced vocals, given life by a 13-piece band and aided by polished string arrangements. In fact, the most difficult question to answer about this music is just what's the difference between Aw C'mon and No, You C'mon? The obvious response is not much of anything, particularly in terms of execution and quality—the two albums sound like twin sides of the same coin, and while Aw C'mon doesn't have a track that rocks as hard as "Nothing Adventurous Please," No, You C'mon lacks a cut as willfully odd as "Women Help to Create the Kind of Men They Despise." In short, there's a serious case of yin and yang going on between these two albums, and it's all but impossible to single out one as better than the other—if you love this band, you're going to want to have both, as they represent Lambchop's strange but beautiful worldview writ large, and if you've never heard the band before, both represent the band's current state of mind equally well. In fact, these two discs would have made for a fine double album, and if Lambchop have chosen to regard them as two separate entities, that just means they've released two of the finest albums of 2004 instead of just one. (Mark Deming, AllMusic)
This selection combines Lambchop twin offerings within an elegantly crafted slipcase.

Lambchop is:
William Tyler: guitar, acoustic guitar
Tony Crow: piano
Matt Swanson: the bass
Sam Baker: drums
Kurt Wagner: vocal, guitar
Jonathan Marx: electronica
Marc Trovillion: more electronica
Deanna Varagona: vocals
Paul Burch, Jr.: vibraphone
Paul Niehaus: guitar, steel guitar
Alex McManus: guitar, thumb piano
Allen Lowrey: percussion
John Delworth: grass roots support
Mark Nevers: knife-guitar
Additional musicians
Ben Martin: drums
George Woods: bass vocals
Curtis Pernice: guitar, acoustic guitar
The Nashville String Machine: strings
Lloyd Barry: strings arrangements
Arranged by Lambchop
Produced by K. Wagner / M. Nevers