Track Listing

1. The Old Gold Shoe
2. Grumpus
3. You Masculine You
4. Up With People
5. Nashville Parent
6. What Else Could It Be?
7. The Distance From Her To There
8. The Book I Haven't Read
9. The Petrified Florist
10. The Butcher Boy

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42133 in Music
• Released on: 2003-06-23
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
The southern states of the US have a reputation for producing gothic writers--dark, florid and atmospheric. Few would argue that Nashville's pre-eminent 13-piece collective, Lambchop, follow in that tradition, in both word and music. On Nixon, group songwriter Kurt Wagner serves up 10 soul-wrenching moments and wraps them in the lush hands of his compatriots. Though long associated with the alt. country scene, Lambchop have never been purists (witness the Jackson 5-ish "Your Fucking Sunny Day" from Thriller), and here they dig deeper into psyche-out music, dark head-trips that culminate in tracks like "Nashville Parent". Not the easiest band to get into, Lambchop nonetheless reward listeners with some of the most intriguing albums around; Nixon--which comes with a suggested reading list--is no different. --Randy Silver

CD Description
Lambchop's NIXON is as wonderfully hard to figure out as anything that the inimitable 13-piece Nashville collective hasyet issued. Gone, for the most part, are the august pedal-steel-driven soundscapes that categorised this album's predecessor. Instead, Kurt Wagner and company flesh out the funk and soul that first peaked through on WHAT ANOTHER MAN SPILLS.
NIXON carries on a loose association with the 37th President of the United States. The album-opening "The Old Gold Shoe" broaches the subject of legacy, while "Up With People"finds its inspiration in the proselytising youth group of the same name that came to prominence during the Nixon administration. There's even a suggested reading list of Richard Nixon biographies in the disc's booklet. Instrumentally, the group pulls out all the stops, blending arena-rock outros, horns that mimic the music of John Phillip Sousa and Kool & the Gang with equal aplomb, a female backing chorus that recalls Pink Floyd at its most turgid, blaxploitation strings, and gurgling synth lines to glorious effect. Wagner revels deliriously in his postmodern soul-man role, layering the Curtis Mayfiled-inspired "What Else Could it Be" with high-pitched "la-la-las" and "hoo-hoos" and closing out the track witha sincere "awww, c'mere sugah".

Customer Reviews

Experimental Genius.
Lambchop are one of those bands that cannot be pigeonholed easily. They take their influences from many genres of music, the result being an explosion of various sounds focused to expressing one emotion at a time. Nixon is the album where this is most evident.

Kurt Wagner is a master songwriter, and knows just how to play on the emotions of his listeners. Nixon takes us down many different, intervening paths. The opening track 'The Old Gold Shoe" is an easy-paced relaxing number. From there the songs varied. 'Up With People' is bright and uplifting, whereas 'The Butcher Boy' much darker and celebrates a fascination with all thing morbid. Each track, however, complements each other to produce an work of essential listening for all music fans, no matter where your taste in music lays.

Lambchop's latest album, Is a Woman, is a far more focus, finely tuned affair. But it lacks the sense of mystery that makes this a winner. If Nixon was the album the band made to find their sound, and Is a Woman the result of that search, then we can say the journey was more rewarding than the goal.

Definitely the album of the year
I had never heard Lambchop before 'Nixon'. The first time I played it, skipping tracks to get a general feeling of the album, all the sounds were so hip that the subsequent information that it was a Nashville band came as a shock. Nashville? Yes, but that's exactly what makes it so beautiful. Listen to tracks such as Grumpus or Up With People and you'll realize that all the soulful and luscious sounds blend with slide guitars, violins and a full orchestra of little things that distinguish it from anything else you've heard before. The best thing about Nixon? Definitely 'You Masculine You', a GREAT track (a personal favourite for this year) and Kurt Wagner's falsetto voice - beautiful, sensual, magical. A must.

Make Friends and Influence People - Play them "Nixon" !
Hopefully the wonderfully surreal video for "Up With People" is gonna introduce the sublime genius of Lambchop to a wider audience sometime soon. In the meantime I'm making a lot of friends by playing "Nixon" to new listeners every week. Anyone from fans of the Cowboy Junkies (the Godfathers of alt.country) to Parliment freaks get into this album pretty darn quick thanks to the ecletic charm of the thing. Oh yeah and it's real hard not sing along to "Up with People" after you've heard it once too. Best Album of the year so far - and thats a hard admission from a big Morcheeba fan like myself!