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Ten albums into a 22-year career and Nashville alt country collective Lambchop are sounding increasingly like a band with diminishing returns. They're stuck on repeat and waiting for the odd wave of critical recognition to wash over them. The last one was in 2000: the year they released the hugely popular, but stylistically similar Nixon LP. And while fans of that and subsequent work will find much to love here, the so-low-key-as-to-be-almost-invisible approach is now wearing thin.
''You disregard the clock that's on the wall'', sings frontman, Kurt Wagner, on National Talk Like A Pirate Day and with the amount of time that he's had to dig up some fresh ideas you have to believe he's being self-referential. There's great stuff here - the winsomely lovelorn I'm Thinking Of A Number Between 1 and 2, in particular. But it all sounds both depressing and depressingly familiar.
Let's put this into perspective using the biggest of benchmarks. There were five years between The Beatles' Please, Please Me and their tenth album, The White Album. Five years between the simple and raucous I Saw Her Standing There and the introspective and intricate While My Guitar Gently Weeps. MBEs and God complexes, acid drops and transcendental meditation fuelled some of the most inspired pop music ever made along the way. And they burnt out in less than half the time that Wagner and his forever-changing line-up of backing musicians have been trawling the circuit.
It's not that Wagner doesn't know how to play his hand - OH (Ohio) is as smart and deft as Lambchop ever were - but he fills his quota of loves lost, chances missed and souls left lonely far too methodically. It's tick list melancholia, same as it ever was, all buoyed up by meandering guitar figures and delivered at a pace that rarely gets above a trot.
OH (Ohio) leaves you wondering where Kurt Wagner's capable of going from here, or (more worryingly) whether he was that bothered about going anywhere in the first place. --Henry Barnes
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Ever since I heard Lambchop--it was Nixon--for the first time, I was hooked. Americana being a new label for me then, I approached them skeptically but was blown away by their music, both Kurt Wagner's lyrical mischief and boldness, and the palette of sounds available in such large band, an array of possibilities you don't always hear.
Pretty much everything they put out up until Is A Woman, I thought, was extraordinary ... never quite the same but maintaining a certain mood and musical thread. After that things were not bad but following albums, although each of them contained gems, did not carry the creative weight of its predecessors.
Ohio is a return to what Lambchop does best, the languid melodies full of nuances and thoughtful twists are back. The melancholy in Wagner's voice is more poignant, I think, and he sounds more determined, as laid back as he's always sounded, to touch you deep inside your heart.
The band is stunning, a tribute to risking being so many and never making a ton of money--until Nixon, Kurt work sanding floors to support himself--that pays off big dividends in this album again. I believe there's a remarkable difference where each instrument in a band comes from a member rather than a studio session player. These guys inhabit and bring their personal touch to these songs, something virtuosos for hire don't always bother with.
Speaking of the songs, although hard to pick some over others, some beauties must be mentioned. Sharing a Gibson with Martin Luther King Jr., Ohio, Popeye, I Believe In You or I'm Thinking of a Number, can be included in a serious Lambchop collection.
All in all, Lambchop's back--although they never went astray--with a powerful album. Power that grows from Wagner hardly raising his voice beyond a whisper and a band that's less concerned with shining individually that glowing together.
Pretty much everything they put out up until Is A Woman, I thought, was extraordinary ... never quite the same but maintaining a certain mood and musical thread. After that things were not bad but following albums, although each of them contained gems, did not carry the creative weight of its predecessors.
Ohio is a return to what Lambchop does best, the languid melodies full of nuances and thoughtful twists are back. The melancholy in Wagner's voice is more poignant, I think, and he sounds more determined, as laid back as he's always sounded, to touch you deep inside your heart.
The band is stunning, a tribute to risking being so many and never making a ton of money--until Nixon, Kurt work sanding floors to support himself--that pays off big dividends in this album again. I believe there's a remarkable difference where each instrument in a band comes from a member rather than a studio session player. These guys inhabit and bring their personal touch to these songs, something virtuosos for hire don't always bother with.
Speaking of the songs, although hard to pick some over others, some beauties must be mentioned. Sharing a Gibson with Martin Luther King Jr., Ohio, Popeye, I Believe In You or I'm Thinking of a Number, can be included in a serious Lambchop collection.
All in all, Lambchop's back--although they never went astray--with a powerful album. Power that grows from Wagner hardly raising his voice beyond a whisper and a band that's less concerned with shining individually that glowing together.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Mainly because it's the most heartfelt and least self-consciously quirky. I thought Damaged was the most boring thing ever; I didn't even get through the whole of it, so I was not at all optimistic about its successor. How many Lambchop albums could really be considered classic? Only Nixon and Is A Woman. This album may lack the same kind of stand-outs as those two albums, but I found myself impossibly moved by these tracks. I listened to a promo copy, I don't know if the actual album has a lyric booklet, and I don't know what half the words are, but it's the moods of the pieces more than anything . . . a powerful melancholy that Wagner has only occasionally tapped before (specifically on the Is A Woman album). This album is NOT BORING. Don't believe the other review that says that. Damaged was boring, because it felt like nothing was really at stake, like Wagner was going through the motions to some degree. Others will no doubt scoff at the idea that this is Lambchop's best album, but it's the one that affected me most, and that's how I measure how good an album is. Particular mention goes to 'Slipped Dissolved And Loosed','Of Raymond' and 'Popeye'. Don't miss the experience of this album, because it is special and unique.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
My first Lambchop CD, but I'm now trying to get them all. Like most great CDs, you need several plays to really get it, but once the songs are there, they won't leave. 'Slipped, Dissolved and Loosed' was the first one I fell for, but then others such as 'National Pirate Day' and 'Sharing a Gibson with Martin Luther King Jnr' (that's a Gibson cocktail, not a guitar, with details of what is in a Gibson detailed in the lyrics) then blew me away. The sort of CD it's hard to stop playing straight through, even if you didn't plan to. No weak songs on it, though the first half is the most remarkable. I agree that it's much better than Damaged. It takes the muted but appealing soundscapes of that, but then weds them to superb songs, and, again agreeing with the above, is very often very moving. Definitely album of the year for me in 2009, and one of my most treasured of all. Buy and play to death.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
This album contains two of Lambchop's greatest ever songs
Kurt Wagner is in masterful form on `Oh Ohio', and in my very humble opinion this record contains two of Lambchop's finest songs to date. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Mr. M. J. Jennings
Oh, Oh Lambchop! Brilliant bliss
Lambchop are one of the few bands around that I like who seem happy to create delicate music rather than trying to assault your ears like a lot of others do. Read more
Published on 15 Sep 2009 by Barry Gilchrist
Boring as hell
Listened to OH (ohio) once, thought, 'Dull. Very dull. Better give it a second chance.'
Listened to it twice, thought, 'Damn! Why did I waste my money? Read more
Listened to it twice, thought, 'Damn! Why did I waste my money? Read more
Published on 15 Nov 2008 by Luke Andreski
Genius
Im a huge fan of Kurts beatiful band. Stumbling upon them back in the NIXON days... That they are branded Alt country it will shock any new ears that OHIO drifts along with subtle... Read more
Published on 13 Oct 2008 by Simon Rea
"I am free from all decisions / I am free from all despair..."
I'm a complete Lambchop neophyte, but I happened to hear this album - it was given away free in the German edition of Rolling Stone - and I loved it. Read more
Published on 28 Sep 2008 by cathy earnshaw
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