Lambchop - Nixon

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Music reviews of Nixon

Music Review: Lambchop: not quite Limp Bizkit.
Rating: 5 Stars

So it got me thinking. Could Kurt and Co. outdo their 'Nookie'? In my opinion, the tiny red letters on the spine of "Thriller" stand up against any other album that I own. To me, "Thriller" is Lambchop's 'Nookie.' The big difference between Limp Bizkit and Lambchop is that I'm just the only one that I know that sings the Lambchop choruses ("I'll show your punk rock ass!").

So before I purchased Nixon this week, I thought what if Lambchop never gets their nookie again? What would I do? [First, I would probably continue to dig Lambchop.] The Salesman and Bernadette was a gorgeous work, but it was Vic songs with Lambchop MAKING his best album. What another man spills was damn good, but it didn't quite have the cohesion or flow of Thriller. Pavement's superb 'Wowee Zowee' is the same way. Full of fantastic songs and possibly some of their best singles, but as a whole, it just didn't quite fit all together. Some of the riffs, progressions, and lyrics on Spills could make me weep, (especially "Schucks"). Again, as an album it never came together for me. I suppose I never really saw them do a lot of the songs from Spills live. By the time they came through Atlanta on the Bernadette tour in 1998, they ended up playing most of what was to become Nixon. Either way, Spills just never hit me like Thriller, Hank, and Jack's did. Again, I think the live thing may do it to me.

I used to always say that you can never judge a record by its cover, unless, of course, it was a jazz or soul album. I continue to follow that to this day. So I bought nixon the other day, got it home, and just looked at it. I had that notion again. It looked like no soul album I'd ever seen, but I just knew it was going to be good. I'd heard a few of the songs from b-sides (the spanish 7" with "the book I haven't read" [incorrectly titled on the single]/ "the distance from her to there") and they composed what was possibly Lambchop's best single to date; yes it might even be better than nine/moody f*****, their first merge 7inch.

In the past and still to this day, I have arguments with my friends about what is and what isn't soul music. I argue that Black Sabbath's first album is one of the best soul albums ever made. The themes common to all soul songs are there: love, love lost, or trying to get love back. So maybe Black Sabbath has references to Lucifer. Oh well, you should still check it out again. In addition to Black Sabbath, Memphis, Detroit, and Philly, there's so much more to the genre of soul music. Country music is soul music through and through. The same themes run through, but it's different approach to presenting the themes. I've read article after article about Lambchop being a country band trying to incorporate soul music; I'm now convinced that the only reason critics say that is because they're from Nashville and they have a pedal steel. If Lambchop is a country band, then it's a soul band moreover. Since the inception of their first album, the classic soul influences have continued to leak into the lambchop studios. Whether it's from members spending a lot of their lives in Memphis or Jonathan's encyclopedic knowledge of the topic, Lambchop have embraced it and become a better band for it. And Kurt's learned a damn good falsetto in the meanwhile.

Even though Lambchop may have adapted their sound when compared to the first record, if you listen to the albums in progression, it makes sense. The overt classic soul influences from Spills, combined with the Smoking strings of Nashville, mixed with the Thrilling Neversland atmospherics, makes for the next logical step: Nixon. Each one of their albums has a slightly different approach to the songwriting, composition, and production. Moving from Jack's obsessions with death to obsessions with the loved ones, Lambchop continues to make some of the sweetest soul music out there. Nixon is no exception. It is the rule.

Description of Nixon

Alternative Rock CDs

• Music > Styles
• Country
• Pop
• Rock