It’s sort of an updated, alternate-universe version of New Order’s “Fine Time”. The song features said Hackett samples, in which he talks incredulously about taking various pills, backed by a busy, ’90s-souding breakbeat. To help us make sense of it all, HeCTA have even included a track called “The Concept”. Its charm is in how it’s alternately whimsical and serious, and sometimes both at the same time. And, strange as the notion may seem, debut album The Diet sounds like something that sprang from such disparate, esoteric sources. Wagner has explained how the impetus for HeCTA came from both a recording of 1960s-vintage comedian Buddy Hackett and a book about 1970s American dance culture. And, along with fellow Lambchop contributors Ryan Norris and Scott Martin, he succeeds more often than not. Yet here is Wagner, two decades and change into a career as frontman and lynchpin of Lambchop, having a go at electronic music. That it comes from men who are best known for alt-country and lilting indie rock is even more impressive and unexpected. “Sympathy for the Auto Industry” is quite an accomplishment, music and message working together to product a song that is still catchy enough to demand repeat playings on the car stereo. Later, when he repeats “You shouldn’t have to change a thing except your mind”, the sentiment sounds like a mantra for a simpler, saner world. “Just give me a car I can understand”, he pleads, neatly summing up the paradox of technological innovation. As moody, minor-key synthesizers cascade over a pulsating electro-rhythm that falls somewhere between Georgio Moroder and Kraftwerk, Kurt Wagner waxes ambivalent about our hyper-accelerated culture. But such a familiar approach doesn’t make HeCTA’s “Sympathy for the Auto Industry” any less effective, or affecting. Best might be this eighteen-minute epic about dancing to cheeseball ‘70s hits at weddings and finding ever new ways to love someone.Using modern technology to make music that decries the effects of modern technology is a tried and true pop music irony. FLOTUS is perhaps their biggest departure, a fantasia of programmed beats and manipulated vocals that elevates rather than obscures Kurt Wagner’s lyrics. Somehow Lambchop are the most adventurous and the most consistent band around, switching everything up to maintain a high level of output over the years. Instead, he’s borrowed someone else’s palette to paint his own, unique picture. Howe is the kind of melancholic slow jam that James Blake would kill to have written, Writer is echoey and sparse, reminiscent of Bill Callahan’s dub album Have Fun With God, while NIV is still tender despite Wagner’s voice being robotically warped out of all recognition.įLOTUS could have been a disaster – a Nashville guy pushing 60 trying out the tropes of the young – but Wagner is too canny to fail like that. It’s not only one of Lambchop’s finest songs, it’s one of 2016’s best.īetween these two behemoths, FLOTUS is more manageable. “We’ll have sunshine,” calls out Wagner, his voice no longer processed. Opener In Care Of 8675309 is like a cut from Mr M, but with Wagner squeezed through subtle Auto-Tune The Hustle, meanwhile, closes the album with an 18-minute epic, more Kraftwerk than Kristofferson. The album is bookended by two long, strangely static songs. Is it more surprising that Lambchop head honcho Kurt Wagner embraced auto-tune or that his vision of merging pseudo-ambient slow jams with understated folk songs resulted in one of the year’s coolest listening experiences? Wagner and pals create lazy, hazy sunshine filtered through the faces of the fog on ‘FLOTUS.’ They sandwiching the electro-folk with a couple of epics, including 18-minute closer “The Hustle” which moves in clipped, slow-motion while Wagner murmurs fragmented memories of a wedding, but more importantly, marriage. Although it sounds little like their best-known work, such as 2000’s Nixon, FLOTUS has some obvious antecedents – 2012’s Mr M was a slow, sparse, soulful record, while The Diet, the 2015 album by Wagner’s side-project HeCTA, dealt with similar electronic textures. It’s mildly surprising, but not shocking –after all, the singer and songwriter has continually pushed the boundaries with Lambchop, the Nashville alt.country group he’s led for almost 30 years. Now, eight years on, Kurt Wagner has taken on the mantle.
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