DO THE SHABBY THING

"Saturday Option," by Lambchop (with the late Vic Chesnutt)

We've always liked the strange, atmospheric countrypolitan band from Nashville, Lambchop. Frontman Kurt Wagner leads the loose music collective with gruff half-spoken singing that cuts through the swirling loungesmoke of pedal steel guitar like a half-drunk barfly heading for the john. When it works, and it does most of the time, the effect is stunning. It's like soundtrack music for fragments, short stories, poems, mood pieces--definitely not your Daddy's country and western but somehow related like a second cousin, twice removed. Do the shabby thing/ With you/ Separate the wood/From the screw...What does that mean, exactly? I kind of know, and so do you. It's like language from a dream, and it has that dream logic that makes perfect sense until you wake up and it fades away. Listen to what Lambchop brought back from dreamland.


"The Old Gold Shoe," live at the AB Brussels