Lambchop – Mr. M
Location: NASHVILLE, Tennessee, US
Album release: February 21 (U.S.) / February 20 (Europe), 2012
Record Label: Merge / City Slang
Tracklist:
01. If Not I’ll Just Die 4:25
02. 2B2 5:39
03. Gone Tomorrow 6:57
04. Mr. Met 7:10
05. Gar 5:28
06. Nice Without Mercy 5:47
07. Buttons 5:21
08. The Good Life (Is Wasted) 3:19
09. Kind Of 5:28
10. Betty’s Overture 3:21
11. Never My Love 3:02
Members:
Tony Crow, Alex McManus, Scott Martin, Ryan Norris, Matt Swanson, William Tyler, Kurt Wagner
Website: http://www.lambchop.net/
Lambchop - Mr. M
CD/DVD, CD, Box Set, LP
The new record starts with some casual cursing yet the last word is ‘love’. It began when singer-songwriter-guitarist-mastermind Kurt Wagner turned away from music and picked up his brushes to paint his way out of a funk that followed the premature death of friend Vic Chesnutt, who the band backed on 1998’s The Salesman and Bernadette. And though the sprawling multi-headed quiet juggernaut that is Lambchop most often treasure performance over artifice, their eleventh album is very much a studio creation.
MR. M started in a painter’s studio in fact. Wagner explains. “As I worked, I was approached by Mark Nevers (former full time band member & producer for the likes of Andrew Bird and Will Oldham) with the idea of making another Lambchop record. He had a concept of a sound and a method that worked with the tone of my writing. His idea was a kind of ‘psycho-Sinatra’ sound, one that involved the arranging of strings and other sounds in a more open and yet complex way. It was a studio creation, not a type of recording based on band performance, and this was a radical approach for us. I felt Lambchop had one more good record in us, and this time I was going to do things as directly and true to my desires as possible.”
The resulting album was recorded at Nevers’s Nashville Beech House studio cum bungalow, working with the usual core of musicians- Scott Martin (drums), Matt Swanson (bass), Ryan Norris (guitar, organ), Tony Crow (piano), William Tyler (guitar). Guests include original co-founder Jonathan Marx, delightful Cortney Tidwell (who shared vocals on 2010’s KORT project) and fiddler Billy Contreras (who has worked with all from Charlie Louvin to Laura Cantrell) - and with spectacular string arrangements shared between Peter Stopschinski and Mason Neely, it stretches out sonically as promised. (Incidentally the paintings, thickly layered black and white portraits forming a series called “Beautillion Millitaire 2000”, feature on the album sleeve and throughout the full artwork).
The album was originally called ‘Mr Met’, but as baseball team the New York Mets have a mascot by that name, the album title had to be changed to avoid legal complications with the baseball league. During the time of this name insecurity, the album was briefly called Major League Bummer.
‘Met’ here isn’t a sports or even an urban reference, but the past participle of ‘to meet’. And here a name for the lost friend, who had been Wagner’s musical “co-communicator” for many years.
In the song ‘Never My Love’, Wagner, for the very first time uses a four-letter word that has never previously appeared in his work.
Yet no Lambchop record has ever been lacking in love, and MR. M is no exception. “This is a record of, and about, love and the healing, binding force that it represents. It’s the thing that becomes, more and more, the only thing worth living for as we move on through these years together, not alone”, says Wagner.
City Slang: http://www.cityslang.com/releases/Slang50013%20DL/mr-m/
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.
The fourth side of the Mr. M double LP contains 4 exclusive, vinyl-only tracks, including "Guess I'm Dumb" (Brian Wilson/Glen Campbell) and 3 remixes.
Merge: http://www.mergerecords.com/store/store_detail.php?catalog_id=834
Photo by: http://www.dutchpix.com
Lambchop – Mr. M
Location: NASHVILLE, Tennessee, US
Album release: February 21 (U.S.) / February 20 (Europe), 2012
Record Label: Merge / City Slang
Tracklist:
01. If Not I’ll Just Die 4:25
02. 2B2 5:39
03. Gone Tomorrow 6:57
04. Mr. Met 7:10
05. Gar 5:28
06. Nice Without Mercy 5:47
07. Buttons 5:21
08. The Good Life (Is Wasted) 3:19
09. Kind Of 5:28
10. Betty’s Overture 3:21
11. Never My Love 3:02
Members:
Tony Crow, Alex McManus, Scott Martin, Ryan Norris, Matt Swanson, William Tyler, Kurt Wagner
Website: http://www.lambchop.net/
Lambchop - Mr. M
CD/DVD, CD, Box Set, LP
The new record starts with some casual cursing yet the last word is ‘love’. It began when singer-songwriter-guitarist-mastermind Kurt Wagner turned away from music and picked up his brushes to paint his way out of a funk that followed the premature death of friend Vic Chesnutt, who the band backed on 1998’s The Salesman and Bernadette. And though the sprawling multi-headed quiet juggernaut that is Lambchop most often treasure performance over artifice, their eleventh album is very much a studio creation.
MR. M started in a painter’s studio in fact. Wagner explains. “As I worked, I was approached by Mark Nevers (former full time band member & producer for the likes of Andrew Bird and Will Oldham) with the idea of making another Lambchop record. He had a concept of a sound and a method that worked with the tone of my writing. His idea was a kind of ‘psycho-Sinatra’ sound, one that involved the arranging of strings and other sounds in a more open and yet complex way. It was a studio creation, not a type of recording based on band performance, and this was a radical approach for us. I felt Lambchop had one more good record in us, and this time I was going to do things as directly and true to my desires as possible.”
The resulting album was recorded at Nevers’s Nashville Beech House studio cum bungalow, working with the usual core of musicians- Scott Martin (drums), Matt Swanson (bass), Ryan Norris (guitar, organ), Tony Crow (piano), William Tyler (guitar). Guests include original co-founder Jonathan Marx, delightful Cortney Tidwell (who shared vocals on 2010’s KORT project) and fiddler Billy Contreras (who has worked with all from Charlie Louvin to Laura Cantrell) - and with spectacular string arrangements shared between Peter Stopschinski and Mason Neely, it stretches out sonically as promised. (Incidentally the paintings, thickly layered black and white portraits forming a series called “Beautillion Millitaire 2000”, feature on the album sleeve and throughout the full artwork).
The album was originally called ‘Mr Met’, but as baseball team the New York Mets have a mascot by that name, the album title had to be changed to avoid legal complications with the baseball league. During the time of this name insecurity, the album was briefly called Major League Bummer.
‘Met’ here isn’t a sports or even an urban reference, but the past participle of ‘to meet’. And here a name for the lost friend, who had been Wagner’s musical “co-communicator” for many years.
In the song ‘Never My Love’, Wagner, for the very first time uses a four-letter word that has never previously appeared in his work.
Yet no Lambchop record has ever been lacking in love, and MR. M is no exception. “This is a record of, and about, love and the healing, binding force that it represents. It’s the thing that becomes, more and more, the only thing worth living for as we move on through these years together, not alone”, says Wagner.
City Slang: http://www.cityslang.com/releases/Slang50013%20DL/mr-m/
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.
The fourth side of the Mr. M double LP contains 4 exclusive, vinyl-only tracks, including "Guess I'm Dumb" (Brian Wilson/Glen Campbell) and 3 remixes.
Merge: http://www.mergerecords.com/store/store_detail.php?catalog_id=834