:: Track Listing

Aw Cmon:
1. Being Tyler
2. Four Pounds in Two Days
3. Steve McQueen
4. The Lone Official
5. Something's Going On
6. Nothing But a Blur from a Bullet Train
7. Each Time I Bring It Up It Seems to Bring You Down
8. Timothy B. Schmidt
9. Women Help to Create the Kind of Men They Despise
10. I Hate Candy
11. Haven't Heard a Word I Said
12. Action Figure

No You Cmon:
1. Sunrise
2. Low Ambition
3. There's Still Time
4. Nothing Adventurous Please
5. The Problem
6. Shang a Dang Dang
7. About My Lighter
8. Under a Dream of a Lie
9. Jan 24
10. The Gusher
11. Listen
12. The Producer

:: Record Review

Lambchop

Aw Cmon/No You Cmon
(Merge; 2004)

Rating: 70/73%


The lights drop after a seemingly endless period of watching heavyset roadies piece together what looks like three group's worth of equipment and gadgets, having the time of their lives testing the gear like their spotlight solo in front of two-hundred thousand people had finally come. My friend and I are a few rows back from the stage at a venue nicknamed "The Lounge," oddly apt for the ensemble we've come to see for the seventh time: Nashville's Lambchop. Two Shows In One Night! the photocopied program exclaims; my brother, still bitter over a vaguely similar setup over a decade before with Guns and Roses, vehemently warned us against the concept. But, as Tom Waits had helped convince us just a few years previous, the key to not fucking up the concept is just letting a band that isn't completely terrible take it on. The two sets, separated with the titles of Aw Cmon and No You Cmon are described in the program as being two sides of the same coin that "will stand on their own as two separate entities." Though we're given the choice of buying into either/or, it seems kind of pointless to invest into one without its counterpart. So here we are, waiting patiently for it all to begin.

The last time we caught them was in 2002's sparse, wine-and-cheese lounge song-cycle Is A Woman, which found the group's songwriter, Kurt Wagner, taking a far less eclectic approach than we'd expect from him and his, uh, posse (which spans, depending on the day, from six to fifteen members). Rumours were that the new material took the genre-bending aesthetic that had made previous works like How I Quit Smoking, What Another Man Spills and even Nixon so good. One thing was certain, though: many of these songs had been recorded for a score commissioned by the San Francisco International Film Festival for a showing of F.W. Murneau's classic 1927 silent film, Sunrise. Though I'd been disappointed by Woman (the only thing I appreciated more than Wagner's songwriting was the fact that I was bored to fucking tears), my hopes remain high; my friend, on the other hand, claims he "never lost faith." He somehow manages to say these words with a straight face.

So finally after ten minutes of darkness and low-level crowd mumbling, they take the stage, and like Polyphonic Spree last year, its like watching the band, Nashville String Machine in tow, roll out of a clown car parked left of the stage. They assemble quickly and break into "Being Tyler," a massively arranged instrumental, prefaced by Wagner as being artfully crafted by band-member William Tyler, though notably absent from the Sunrise film score. Wagner takes the mic for the next few tracks that follow in a familiar lounge-pop/R&B amalgamation, given incredible weight by the layers of strings and Wagner's deep and distinctive timbre. The second of these two vocal tracks, "Steve McQueen," following much in the vein of Woman, relays its golden rule-type lyrical assertions with a lushly arranged backing track, giving it a life that had escaped many of Woman's cuts. It's quickly followed by the deliciously cheerful "The Lone Official" before returning to a more somber vocal track and, well, the rest of the set follows in a similar vein -- the instrumentals sporadically bring up the tempo to give the set an important dynamic.

And, after the spacious closing track, "Action Figure" ("as close to a classic Lambchop song and sound as any," he jokes beforehand), the first set comes to a close and they walk off. Once again the homely house-crew tinker with the equipment and we wait, contemplating what we'd just heard. Though nothing really blew me away, a good portion of the set was, unlike the last record, easily enjoyable -- especially the terrifically titled and cleverly structured "Every Time I Bring It Up It Seems to Bring You Down," "I Hate Candy," sporting the best arrangement of the evening so far, and the lounge-y "Timothy B. Schmidt." It's a promising start and suddenly I'm a little more anxious for the second half of the evening than I was before the first. Thankfully, they don't make us wait long.

They storm out again and kick into the opening track of the second half of the evening (No Cmon), "Sunrise," already sounding a little more confident with the audience's reception of their startling first set. What follows is more or less what we heard the first time around, but with less focus on a particular mood and more on letting each individual song attempt something memorable. As a result, there a few real standouts this time around. "There's Still Time" floats by with hints of wah-wah guitar, female harmonies and a sensual R&B vibe ("it started out as a mild tribute to the great Barry White," Wagner coyly admits), followed by the distorted Bowie-meets-Hedwig rock of "Nothing Adventurous Please," which manages to work, even disregarding the songs that they perform before and after it, save the vaguely similar but more successful instrumental "Jan 24." They end the entire evening off with a yet another beautiful instrumental, "The Producer," propelled by a hypnotic repeated descending piano riff and a spaghetti-western lead guitar line; once the last note fades, they bow and file off, one by one.

Though they trip into a few awkward moments along the way -- like the doo wop mess of "Shang A Dang Dang," the grating "Women Help To Create The Kind of Men They Despise," or the dude's-hitting-the-wah-wah-pedal-like-he's-high-enough-to-think-it-sounds-good "I Haven't Heard A Word I Said" -- Aw Cmon and No You Cmon constitute a promising chapter in Lambchop's career that finds them confidently exploring a significant amount of ground, and a breath of fresh air after the monotony of Is A Woman. As we leave, my friend claims he's a little disappointed -- "yeah, on the surface it sounded more varied, but the songwriting was so strong on Woman, dude," he argues, continuing to mutter something about it not having heart, again with a straight face, and I shake my head, laughing. I can't help but feel that Lambchop have managed to pull off their incredibly ambitious project with a respectable amount of success. There's no How I Quit Smoking in here, of course, but it's certainly a couple of steps in the right direction. Scott Reid :: 30 March 2004 |