(Chamber Pop, Avant-Funk) [WEB] Lambchop - Live at XX Merge - 2009, FLAC (tracks), lossless

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)

Back in 2009, those of us lucky enough to be at Cat’s Cradle when Lambchop took the stage witnessed the performance that became Live at XX Merge, a concert film and album.
To help celebrate Merge’s 20th anniversary, the band showed up in one of its largest lineups ever—11 strong, including multiple guitars, keyboards, piano, and a horn section. While Lambchop performing live is always a powerful proposition, on this night they started quietly with “I Will Drive Slowly” from their first album (I Hope You’re Sitting Down) and accelerated from there, each song seemingly faster and more intensely played than the last, building to a furious finale of “Up With People” and an epic “Give It.” By the end of Lambchop’s set, everyone in the packed Cat’s Cradle—band and audience both—was levitating a few inches off the ground. (http://www.mergerecords.com/lambchop-live-at-xx-merge)
When Lambchop were first conceived as Posterchild in the late '80s, it was in the spirit of getting together to play with no discernible purpose. Anybody who wanted in could have in. There is still something of that spirit in the 11-piece edition of Kurt Wagner's venerable Lambchop that appeared at Merge Records' 20th anniversary festival in North Carolina in July 2009. Between horns and keyboards and multiple strummers, including the supremely tasteful lead guitarist William Tyler -- who embodies Lambchop's indie Nashville vibe to a T -- Wagner's project is still impossible to classify, and completely sublime. Wagner pulls from all corners of his 15-year career, stacking them into a pleasing arc, including erudite mid-set R&B ("Your Fucking Sunny Day," from 1997's Thriller), a show-opening alt-country lilt ("I Will Drive Slowly," from 1994's I Hope You're Sitting Down), and a joyous rock climax ("Give It," which begins as a half-sung recitation and propels itself into a chorus of Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime"). Recorded pristinely, the band's first official live album -- not counting a few tour-only discs -- is as pleasing as any of its ten albums, the wall of sound as fresh and wonderful as ever. On "Grumpus," from 2000's Nixon, the band fits together brass, noisy guitar, Tyler's reverberated fingerpicking, and slightly dirty synth fills, each totally finding its own space in the mix. Complex and accessible, avant-garde and pleasing to the ear, introspective and cathartic, Lambchop communicate themselves in full, and there remains nobody like them in American music. (Jesse Jarnow, AllMusic

Kurt Wagner
William Tyler
Jonathan Marx
Scott Martin
Matt Swanson
Tony Crow
Deanna Varagona
Ryan Norris
Alex McManus
Marc Trovillion
Stacy Philpott