Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 14/08/06
Label: City Slang

"Think of me as serious or slightly disappointed," invites Kurt Wagner in "Beers Before The Barbican". "I'm not looking to defend this attitude." It is a clear statement of intent: this is Wagner's most ineffably sad moment. Saying that one Lambchop album is more or less insert-adjective-here than any other is like comparing fine wines - to a few there will be distinct variations in bouquet and mouthfeel but to everyone else it's just one lovely, high-class tipple after another.

"Damaged" is as nuanced, temperate and contemplative as its predecessor, and - unless pigs start getting pilots' licences - its successor will surely be too. Currents of piano, brass, strings and acoustic and steel guitars ripple and eddy about, as ever, over the world's least-aggressive rhythm section, while Wagner mumble-sings his inner thoughts and notebook jottings as if into a dictaphone on a busy train. Lyrically, however, there is one discernible feature here: a vulnerability that has often been masked before in layers of humour and whimsy.

And he could teach the young 'uns a much-needed thing or two about the power of the understatement. When, later in the same song, he delivers the line "Your dress is...perfect" it contains a universe more tenderness, regret and lip-chewing emotion than a hundred "you're beautiful"s, "let me hold you"s or "I love my chick"s. "Paperback Bibles"'s list of unwanted items bartered on the US radio show "Swap Shop" - "a kitchen sink and a rocking chair", a "size eight prom pageant dress...worn just once", a puppy, a herd of goats - reads like a metaphor for moving on and leaving the detritus of an old life behind.

There's a similarly dignified sorrow in the poignant "Prepared (2)" in which some late night piano dabbing yields to gossamer strings and the fragmented tale of a relationship collapsing as a woman denies an affair while combing her hair before the mirror. All of this would be too much to take were it not for the notes of hope which ring out towards the end of the album, with penultimate track "Short" insisting "We can close our eyes and picture better days ahead / Even now the phone begins to ring".

Finally, with "The Decline & Fall Of Western Civilisation", Wagner lets off steam with a rant at - amongst other more shadowy targets - Tennessee slave trader, American Civil War leader and Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest. It still sounds gentler than a feather floating in the mist, but is the sign of a fire being rekindled in the belly of one of America's most unique and cherishable talents.

    by Anna Britten