Showtunes
Following a string of albums deconstructing Lambchop’s sound, Kurt Wagner continues to reinvent his band, this time using MIDI-assisted piano melodies to write love songs to music itself.
Kurt Wagner is from Tennessee, not Georgia, but he understands the yin and yang of cool and warm as well as anyone in contemporary popular music, and 2021's Showtunes, the 16th studio album from his long-running group Lambchop, is built around the balance between the cool textures of his music and the emotional warmth of Wagner's alternately morose and hopeful lyrics and vocal delivery.
Somehow you get the sense early on that "Showtunes" may take us where Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner has not gone before—and that is not many places, by the way.
Kurt Wagner puts a midi keyboard centre stage on Lambchop’s expansive, laid-back latest
Impressively, it seems like Lambchop just aren't capable of playing it safe. Kurt Wagner's troupe have made another beautiful experiment
If the stereotype about show tunes is that they are boldly performed and exciting, Lambchop stand the tropes on their head with 'Showtunes'.
The always mordant Kurt Wagner reaches new levels of gloom. New music review by Joe Muggs