***The only prophets worth a shit are the reluctant ones, and so it was that right before he started work on what would become his 16th album, The Bible, LAMBCHOP's KURT WAGNER found himself at the proverbial crossroads. Nearing the end of Lambchop’s third decade, Wagner felt musically isolated. Many of his old bandmates were either long gone or uninterested in touring anymore. He questioned whether making music even made sense. Wagner was actually considering getting a job at the grocery store down the road. “I feel weird because I’m going to be 64, dude,” he says in between drags on a cigarette, on the phone from his home in Nashville. “What the fuck am I doing?” The Bible is the sound of Kurt Wagner looking backwards and forwards, asking this and all the other big questions. The music on The Bible is more unpredictable than it’s ever been on a Lambchop record. Jazz careening into country, into disco, into funk, and back to country. He can call it whatever he wants in this bio. The sounds all jumbled together with snatches of observations, words torn from the headlines in Minneapolis—bumper stickers on the freeway, or graffiti from outside that decommissioned paint factory. This is Lambchop’s 16th album, with a completely new lineup, their first after the plague. Features an etching on the D-side.
2XLP $25.75
09/30/2022
***A reissue of the debut album from LAMBCHOP originally released in 1994. Available for the first time on vinyl in North America, with the added track, "Or Thousands o Prizes," which wasn't previously included on CD or cassette. Housed in gatefold jackets with the original paintings by bandleader KURT WAGNER.
2XLP $24.95
12/17/2021
***In late 2019, Kurt Wagner was experimenting with something new, something that would eventually reveal itself as Lambchop’s Showtunes. By taking simple guitar tracks and converting them into MIDI piano tracks, “Suddenly I discovered I could ‘play’ the piano,” he says. “It was a revelation that from those conversions, I was able to manipulate each note and add, subtract, arrange the chords and melody into a form that didn’t have any of the limitations I had with my previous methods of writing with a guitar.” Removing these limitations led to a surprising new sound, something akin to show tunes but with edges sanded down and viewed through Kurt’s own specific lens. Around the same time, Kurt was preparing for a live show. He’d been asked to participate in the Wisconsin-based Eaux Claires summer festival. With rough ideas already fleshed out alone, along with some input from previous collaborator Twit One, Kurt reached out to Ryan Olson and Andrew Broder. Needless to say, this show never happened. What it did lead to, though, was a whole new era for Lambchop. Having initially met in early 2020 and then working remotely from there, Kurt, Olson, and Broder continued to experiment with these ideas, eventually leading to Showtunes. The original idea behind Lambchop was: anyone could be part of Lambchop (so long as they behaved themselves). This revolving doorpolicy is how the band has grown and contracted through our many years. This led to the addition of one more key player. For the...
LP $18.95
07/16/2021
CD $12.75
05/21/2021
***In the fall of 2019, Lambchop's Kurt Wagner had a unique idea: In lieu of going on what would become an economically disastrous tour, he would invite the band to Nashville to make a record as a way to provide them with similar financial support and realize something tangible in the process. Each band member was tasked with choosing one song for the band to cover, and leading the recording session to completion each day. Recorded at Battletapes in Nashville, TN, TRIP sounds like a culmination of the band’solder work and current work. There’s a looseness and freedom that recalls their older sound mixed with a group sophistication and innovation derived through the process ofplaying together for so long. The title TRIP refers to the circumstances surrounding its creation and the endeavor of “touring” itself. Features songs by Jeff Tweedy; Earl "Peanut" Montgomery; Jamie Klimek and Jim Crook; Stevie Wonder; Holland, Holland & Dozier; and James McNew.
LP $17.75
11/13/2020
CD $12.75
11/13/2020
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received an 8.1 rating from Pitchfork. The shift is so subtle and unassuming, you may never notice it happens. But 42 minutes into LAMBCHOP's fourteenth studio album—the disarming but intimate confessional called This (is what I wanted to tell you)—KURT WAGNER steps forward, his voice newly unadorned. With the Auto-Tune gild of recent Lambchop records momentarily leached away, his voice is as open and honest as the acoustic guitar and lonesome harmonica that traipse beneath it. The feelings practically pour between the cracks of his stunning baritone, raw for the first time in years. This is what he wanted to tell you, plain and simple and pure. In tone poems that link poignant snapshots of everyday scenes with koan-like reflections about what it takes and means to stay alive in these modern times, Wagner limns a world that seems to be falling apart.
LP $18.85
03/22/2019
CD $13.75
03/22/2019
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received an 8.1 rating from Pitchfork. The shift is so subtle and unassuming, you may never notice it happens. But 42 minutes into LAMBCHOP's fourteenth studio album—the disarming but intimate confessional called This (is what I wanted to tell you)—KURT WAGNER steps forward, his voice newly unadorned. With the Auto-Tune gild of recent Lambchop records momentarily leached away, his voice is as open and honest as the acoustic guitar and lonesome harmonica that traipse beneath it. The feelings practically pour between the cracks of his stunning baritone, raw for the first time in years. This is what he wanted to tell you, plain and simple and pure. In tone poems that link poignant snapshots of everyday scenes with koan-like reflections about what it takes and means to stay alive in these modern times, Wagner limns a world that seems to be falling apart. Limited edition vinyl pressed on clear vinyl.
LP $18.85
03/22/2019
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received an 8.2 rating from Pitchfork. What Another Man Spills (1998) represents a milestone in LAMBCHOP's career, but not in the modern sense of a ‘landmark’ release. Building on foundations that had once sounded almost literally creaky, it expands upon the tentative manoeuvres they’d undertaken with the previous year’s Thriller (1997) and gestures confidently towards its brassy successor, Nixon, which would arrive in 2000 to wild acclaim and previously unimaginable commercial success. Indeed, it sits at a crossroads between the band that Lambchop first emerged as, and the band that they would later become. In terms of production, What Another Man Spills represented a huge leap forward, and stylistically it took bold, convincing strides towards uncharted territory too. Its impact wouldn’t be felt for another couple of years, of course, but then it would suddenly look like part of a carefully orchestrated masterplan. Today, too, it continues to stand as a vibrant, satisfying snapshot of a band at a pivotal moment in their lengthy career. First time domestic vinyl pressing. Limited Edition LP version pressed on white and yellow swirled vinyl in an edition of 750.
CD $14.00
08/03/2018
2XLP $25.95
08/03/2018
***For Love Often Turns Us Still—officially titled FLOTUS—is like many of LAMBCHOP's records: a subtle masterpiece, the kind that slowly and generously reveals its quiet wisdom to those patient and attentive enough to receive it. Start to finish, FLOTUS is imbued with that magic energy that comes when an artist stumbles upon the thrill of the new—something that makes them crazy enough to want to start the whole process over again. The album is bookended by two long-form pieces: the first, “In Care of 8675309,” is most reminiscent of where Lambchop has been, while the second, the sprawling, hypnotic “The Hustle,” suggests where they might still be headed. The latter seamlessly shifts between movements, a foundation suggestive of krautrock and early electronic music, gorgeously ornamented with perfectly placed piano and horns. Drawing upon a diverse palate of influences and transcending each one, it’s a stunning piece of work—certainly one of the most impressive achievements of Lambchop’s catalogue.
CD $14.00
11/04/2016
2XLP $22.95
11/04/2016
***BACK iN STOCK!!! Received an 8.3 Best New Music rating from Pitchfork. It’s been nearly two decades since LAMBCHOP released its first album, at the time pronouncing itself “Nashville’s most fucked-up country band.” Provocative it may have been, but the description made sense: at the heart of all that ruckus was a band at once defying and embracing the musical legacy of its hometown. Since then, Lambchop has evolved into an accomplished ensemble, adding palpable depth and substance to singer-songwriter-guitarist KURT WAGNER’s songs—and the band sounds as commanding as ever on its 11th album, Mr. M, a collection of meditations on love and loss and the detritus of everyday existence. As on past Lambchop records, many of the songs on Mr. M are framed with lush strings, and there’s a restrained undercurrent of distortion and discord. The core of the music remains the cyclical picking of Wagner’s guitar and the soft, warm croaking of his voice. The songs are spacious, even dreamy, as on the Countrypolitan instrumental “Gar,” while the lyrics and titles are rich with allusions, some of them obvious, others seemingly unknowable. LP includes four bonus tracks.
CD $13.75
02/21/2012
2XLP $25.95
08/19/2016
***As Merge fans know, LAMBCHOP has been on the label since 1993, releasing a string of widely varied but consistently brilliant records. But the live Lambchop experience has been somewhat elusive in the US. While the band has toured the gilded theaters of Europe and elsewhere for nearly two decades, the Nashville group has seldom toured their home country. KURT WAGNER has performed solo on a recent Yo La Tengo tour, and Lambchop supported their recent album, (OH) Ohio, as an intimately stripped-down quintet in a couple of short bursts over the last year. To help celebrate Merge’s 20th Anniversary the band showed up in one of their largest lineups in recent memory—11-strong, including multiple guitars, keyboards, piano, and a horn section. Lambchop performing live is always a powerful proposition, but 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 their set, everyone in the packed Cats Cradle—band and audience both—was levitating a few inches off the ground.
LP $18.25
09/09/2014
CD $12.00
12/08/2009
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received an 8.3 Best New Reissue rating from Pitchfork. Nixon was released in early 2000. It was LAMBCHOP’s fifth LP, and the first record of any kind that the band had released in over a year, after a half-decade in which scarcely three months went by without some kind of new Lambchop music. Starting with the swell of horns in the middle of album opener “The Old Gold Shoe,” Nixon glides easily from one unexpected grace note to the next, peppering in funk, R&B, gospel, country, vintage folk—and integrating them all, not presenting them discretely. Lambchop has always taken its Nashville origins seriously, making use of the wide variety of talented musicians who live and work in Music City. Nixon drew Lambchop’s usual raft of mixed reviews and modest sales stateside—though the positive reviews were more positive than ever, as manycritics put the album on their year-end best-of lists, and fans who’d long loved the band felt more comfortable evangelizing to newcomers about such an accessible, tuneful record. Over the years, as Lambchop has continued to experiment, making more albums that are just as conceptual and well executed, Nixon has grown in stature as a sort of origin point. Yet as much as it was the kickoff to a new chapter in Lambchop’s story, Nixon was also an ending of sorts, at least as far as WAGNER is concerned. On the records that have followed, he’s tended to work with fewer personnel on any given track, moving away...
LP $22.50
01/28/2014
2XCD $14.75
01/28/2014
***For over a dozen years LAMBCHOP has been Nashville’s most fucked-up country band. Continually challenging the notion of what ‘Nashville’ and ‘Country’ mean, the ever changing cast of characters in Lambchop have turned out brilliant album after brilliant album. On The Decline of Country & Western Civilization the disparate members of Lambchop have collected A-sides, B-sides, compilation tracks and unreleased songs in a chronological compendium of a golden age in their career. Spanning the years 1994 through 1999, this collection from the Lambchop archives centers around the weather-worn and haunting voice of Kurt Wagner, the one constant in a band that numbers as many as twenty and as few as four depending on the time or place. If you’re currently enjoying the Silver Jews or relative newcomers like Okkervil River or M. Ward, come discover a fertile musical history where Lambchop ties together influences as diverse as Porter Wagoner, Curtis Mayfield and the Velvet Underground with contemporaries like Giant Sand, Vic Chesnutt and Sonic Youth. ON SALE 5% UNTIL 4/25/2006
CD $13.75
04/11/2006
***The ninth album from Nashville's decade-running Americana style blenders LAMBCHOP, and the second of two new albums to be released at the same time. No You Cmon (and its companion Aw Cmon) sees the band continuing musical evolution, as they take off on a journey full of lush instrumentals, rousing rave-ups, and thoughtful ballads.
CD $13.75
02/24/2004
