There was a golden period in Americana music at the turn of the century. Wilco, Mercury Rev, Sparkehorse, Grandaddy are just some of the acts to have taken the genre to even weirder and more wonderful places with albums that have and will continue to stand the test of time. It could be argued that it ushered a new era of Americana that would push out the more rootsy traditional Americana that has its heels firmly dug in more old fashioned ways.
However, Lambchop's Nixon is the one album during that period that dispelled this myth. A album that is mysterious, thoughtful, meandering and in many ways more real than any of their contemporaries. The album is played in its entirety to a packed theatre at the Barbican and while songs like 'Up With People' and 'The Distance from Her to There' retain the atmospherics that make it so good on record there is large parts of the album that fail to live up to their potential live with three or four tracks almost warping into each other and seeing this reviewers mind wander.
They may lack the slick stage banter needed to really form a rapport with an audience but they are an incredibly tight band and even if each song doesn't land as much as I'd like it to I can respect that. There is an impressive array of musicians on show tonight with a special mention reserved for the percussionist who makes so many of tonight's tracks excel beyond their station.
After 'Nixon' the band treat us to a few other classics that go down a storm. Kurt Wagner and his band of followers have soul in abundance and while they sing about the mundane and the ordinary they are able to bring out the beauty of everyday life like few others. They deliver a splendid version of 'Gone Tomorrow' from 'Mr.M' that adds a sprinkle of excitement while a cover of David Bowie's 'Young Americans' ensures that although the gig did falter at times there was enough moments of real beguiling beauty to have made this gig more than worthwhile.
FUTURE GIGS
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