Lambchop live review – Brighton October 2008
A review of Lambchop at St Georges Church in Brighton on October 29th 2008.
who are Lambchop?
Lambchop are a band of revolving members, but always focused around songwriter Kurt Wagner. The band come from Nashville, and a friend who once toured them mentioned Kurt used to be a builder (or possibly a gardener, I can’t quite remember). In any case, the band have released around 12 albums (and many more live ones) since 1994, all of which strongly feature a classic dusty American sound, tinged with elements of rock, soul and dare I say it, lounge. Kurt also once branched into the dance arena, featuring on the popular hit “Give it” by X-press 2.
Lambchop’s members vary, over 30 people have contributed to albums over the years including Bright Eyes Conor Oberst. Tonight we have the now well established line up of the regular band including pianist Tony Crow and William Tyler, guitarist, support act and Budweiser commercial star.
(William’s on the left)
what was the music like tonight?
Unusually for a new album (and they were the first to admit it) the band played “Oh Ohio” in order, from start to finish. Since they are more of a mood band anyway this wasn’t a huge issue, but it has to be said, its not one of their strongest albums. I saw Lambchop on the Is a Woman tour which was such a down tempo album they had to mix it up live, and it was one of the best put together sets I’ve ever seen. Tonight felt like less of a seminal gig, but its still a good album, even if it did make for a slightly workmanlike first half.
After a brief break the band returned with a pumping live version of the X-press 2 track “Give it”. If you don’t know what I mean, here’s the original – you’ll know it. This video also features a Kurt cartoon, which is nice!
This was then followed by a selection of hits from the very early “I hope your sitting down”, which as Kurt noted we all were, “How I quit smoking” and later albums including my favourite for going to sleep to “Is a woman” (that’s not an insult, for about a year I listened to that every night, and it was the only thing that could get me to sleep on a noisy night train from Brussels to Berlin).
So tonight, it wasn’t about the hits, but Lambchop are about more than individual tracks. Kurts voice was as rough and simultaneously comforting as ever, like drinking neat whisky. The band came together nicely and were diversely layered enough to be able to pull off both a huge meaty club sound for Give It, and take us into a smoky lounge bar for many of the others. You can’t say that about Fischerspooner.
4/5
“How I quit smoking” – live footage from a previous gig
the stage presence and banter
Unlike many bands, Lambchop place emphasis on jokes as well as music. At all their gigs there is plenty of banter between Kurt and Tony, and Tony always prepares a few jokes to share. Tonight was no exception, with a pirate theme running throughout, something to do with their new track “International talk like a pirate day”. This is not a band who takes itself too seriously.
5/5
the audience and venue
Tonight’s venue was St Georges Church, a working church and a gorgeous sit down venue. Average age tonight, around 50, not quite sold out but still busy and a mostly male audience. Tonight’s audience was very quiet, and they did not react well to all of the jokes or attempts to make conversation by Kurt. At one point someone bravely, but with a quavering voice, cried out “Kurt for president”, sadly his confidence was not strong enough to carry him and his words became lost. When Kurt asked him to repeat, he did not respond, leading perhaps to the band assuming they had just been heckled.
We did politely laugh at all the jokes, clap when required and refrain from heckling the new songs as the band explained had happened in Europe, so I think we made a good impression. Also, everyone sang along for the last track when asked to. All in all, a lack of passion, but polite.
3/5
the support
Support tonight was supposed to come from Rose Kemp, but she couldn’t make it so the aforementioned William Tyler filled in. His music was very simple, just a him, a guitar and some looping pedals. He built up each track into a layered, more complex number and then moved on to the next one. All in all 4 songs I think it was, but they all sounded much the same. I wasn’t overly impressed, but he’s a talented guy and its the kind of thing you wouldn’t mind sticking on if you were about to do some reading, a crossword, or perhaps go to sleep.
3/5
overall
A quality night of entertainment. Fantastic music, a nice crowd and a good sense of humour. Still, it didn’t stand out as much as previous gigs I’ve seen them perform have and that included the very special solo Kurt Wagner gig in Brighton last year. I was a little disappointed, but that’s what seeing artists several times always does, so a fair:
4/5
some Lambchop videos for you
Paperback Bible live
Kurt performing “The decline of country and western civilization” in a record shop
A preview of the DVD No Such Silence
more Lambchop
The official Lambchop website has news, videos, tour dates and more.
You can watch a Kurt Wagner solo performance online as part of NPR’s tiny desk concert series, where artists play a gig on a tiny desk.
Words Mark Kirby, photo Rob Noble, videos YouTube
It was my first time seeing the ‘chop, and I was very excited to be in such close proximity to the band, and to see them in such an intimate, unusual setting. The church stage (altar, I suppose) was beautifully lit, and made for an arresting image with an effigy of Christ, gloomily lit in green, hanging over the band.
The band started playing the new album through, but third song in they threw in a beautiful cover of ‘You’re A Big Girl Now’ by Bob Dylan, ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPKMbvHHUss ), which got me tremendously excited me, as I’m a huge Dylan fan. The audience whooped in appreciation.
The band sounded wonderful, and it was great to be able to hear all the details in such a venue, even the clunk of an empty squeezed beer can or the tinny snap of a cameraphone could be heard above the music. So there would be no excuse in such a venue for the audience not to be able to hear Kurt Wagner’s vocals, you would think, but for me (sat upstairs on the balcony to the right), I could only hear perhaps every fifth word, which is such a shame, when the lyrics are such a large part of what I love about the band. Admittedly, I am only familiar with the ‘Aw C’mon/No, You C’mon’ double album and ‘Damaged’, and they didn’t play many songs from those albums, though I would have been intrigued to know what the song Kurt described as being about “smoking weed and drinking beer and not doing much else” when he gave the audience the choice of hearing that, or instead what turned out to be ‘Bugs’.
The inter song banter remained my most favourite part then, with pianist Tony Crow introducing guitarist William Tyler (immortalised in the ‘Aw C’mon’ instrumental classic ‘Being Tyler’) as “my youngest son”, and Tyler responding saying that he hoped maybe the over-hanging Jesus would “now give him his birthday back”, drawing a few cheers of support from a couple of other 25th December-born audience members. Kurt also described the meanings of a few songs, with ‘Of Raymond’ being written about God, from the perspective of the concrete Virgin Mary statue at the bottom of his yard. He described how he was thinking that ‘God’ was just another word for ‘love’, so in trying to come up with an alternate word for God, he thought of the TV show, ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’, and so it became ‘Of Raymond’. Such explanations drew baffled polite laughter from the majority of the crowd, but I hung on every word, and thought the band all came across as intelligent, funny, and with a hefty dose of anti-religious sentiment, which may have struck the wrong chord with some of the audience, who looked like they were only there because of a Parish season ticket perhaps.
Towards the end of the first part of the set, I began to grow weary of just hearing another song I didn’t know, and not being able to hear the lyrics, and the atmosphere perhaps became a little stifled as the rest of the audience may have begun to feel the same. The band went off for the encore, and I saw Kurt have a word with the sound girl, perhaps intimating to turn up the vocal just a little? It may have been marginally louder, but still pretty indeterminable, when they came back out, but the charisma and presence of Kurt brought the encore to life, with a stirring version of a song that morphed into Talking Heads’ ‘Once In A Lifetime’ with Kurt pointing intensely and aggressively at individual members of the audience, as he sang such lines as “And you may ask yourself, am I right or am I wrong?” The band seemed to be enjoying themselves a little more during the encore, but ultimately I was left disappointed at the lack of vocals in what could have otherwise been a very inspiring gig. Hope the soundman and woman read this. I know that even on the albums, the vocals are quite deeply buried in the mix, adding to the confessional feel of the lyrics, and you have to really strain to listen to be fully rewarded, but even at full strain tonight, a mere few metres away, in a building designed for acoustic excellence, to paraphrase one of his song titles, I didn’t hear a word he’d said.
Spot on Nick, thanks for your contribution – a better review than mine – come join us!
Cheers Mark! My next gig is Nick Cave on Sunday, so I shall try and bash something out after that.