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Lambchop: Gentle, but insistent music

This was a serene, confident bunch playing gentle, but insistent music.
22 maart 2002, Belcourt Theatre, Nashville (USA)

Tekst: Dave Weil

Publicatiedatum: 27 maart 2002

There are literally hundreds of live venues in Nashville. but surely, along with the Ryman Auditorium (the old home of the Grand Ole Opry), the modest Belcourt Theatre has to be considered about the best-sounding and most comfortable place to see a show in Nashville. Saved from the wrecking ball by concerned citizens a couple of years back, this old theatre is rapidly gaining a reputation for great acoustics, a wonderful community feel, and a place where you can sit in revered silence and actually hear the performer that you are attending (which is a double-edged sword, since it's easy for a performance to become a museum piece).

Lambchop have been touring the country with a modified line-up, and people have been discovering a splinter Lambchop touring (Paul Burch's WPA sucks a few group members from the fold, and others are living in other places and working on other projects). It must be oddly disconcerting for a rabid Lambchop fan to only see seven or eight people on stage instead of the usual double-digit line-ups, much like seeing a newly anorexic girlfriend after several years.

Well, in preparation for the upcoming European tour, Kurt Wagner assembled a full complement of his merry gang for a show at the Belcourt. He's added Willie Tyler, who was with Superdrag for a while, and such stalwarts as Dennis Cronin, Paul Burch, Paul Niehaus, and Jonathan Marx were back on stage, and new pianist Tony Crow creates a solid foundation for the group. Europeans can apparently expect something between the eight or so members on the previous part of the US tour and the 13 folks who played at the Belcourt. (At least I think I counted 13. Even Kurt Wagner, who had to break the introductions down to three separate occasions, didn't seem quite sure how many people were there.)

This was a slightly different setup from the last time that they played at the Belcourt, opening for Yo La Tengo last year. In place of the horn section, Deanna Varagona has switched to acoustic guitar for most of the set, only touching a sax for one song. Dennis Cronin alternated between a trumpet and an odd electronic horn with a plastic flex tube for a mouthpiece.

One thing that hasn't changed is the placid, quiet ambience that the band displays. Rarely have so many people been so quiet on stage. It's a refreshing change from the normal amped-up stage presence of most bands. Wagner's baritone whisper begs the listener to listen closely, and the ambience is of a band playing in your living room just for you.

Gone for the most part is the background electronic blanket of sound lurking around the corners of the music, although there were glimpses of this here and there. This was a far more straightforward "folk" sound, and the r&b touches evident in the past were absent. This follows the trend espoused by the new album 'Is A Woman'. Concentrating on the new album with songs like 'My Blue Wave' and 'D. Scott Parsley', they didn't entirely forget their past, playing such classics like 'Nashville Parent'.

This was a serene, confident bunch playing gentle, but insistent music, and if you're in the mood for raucous boisterous music, better make other plans. But if you are open to Wagner's amalgam of American music and tales of sexual politics and parenthood, this is the show for you.

Encouraging was the fact that filmmaker Matt Boyd, who did the European video for 'Up With People', was present with multiple cameras. Perhaps we'll soon be blessed with a live document of this show.

http://www.kindamuzik.net/live/lambchop/lambchop-gentle-but-insistent-music/1424/
Meer Lambchop op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/lambchop