[Sidebar] The Worcester Phoenix
December 25 - January 1, 1998

[Music Reviews]

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*** Lambchop

WHAT ANOTHER MAN SPILLS

(Merge)

Nashville's strangest traditional country band, Lambchop, just keep growing -- with this album, they're up to 14 members, plus guests including Vic Chesnutt. Ringleader Kurt Wagner's bottle-got-me-down baritone presides over a surprisingly quiet, slow, subdued clan whose output includes pedal steel, guitar lines that waft to the ground like a feather, and hints of strings, brass, and vibraphone. The disc's drama is over-the-top enough that it could be an old country-radio staple, except that most of the songs forgo hooks in favor of minutely focused orchestration -- more Belle and Sebastian than Mother Maybelle. And if you listen closely to Wagner's words, they're a lot stranger than you'd expect to find on a Southern jukebox: "Do the shabby thing, you/Separate the beef from the stew."

Lambchop seem to have found part of their calling doing subtle, richly textured covers of unlikely songs. Last year's Thriller included three songs originally done by their Merge labelmates East River Pipe. Two more appear here, along with versions of Dump's lovely "It's Not Alright" (the only rock-like moment) and, brilliantly, Curtis Mayfield's "Give Me Your Love," which gets a huge, swooping disco-strings arrangement and some awesome falsetto singing.

-- Douglas Wolk
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