Performer Notes

Lambchop: Kurt Wagner (vocals, guitar, Juno keyboards); Paul Niehaus (electric & pedal steel guitars, background vocals); Mark Nevers, Alex McManus (guitar); Deanna Varagona (baritone saxophone, background vocals); Dennis Cronin (trumpet, cornet, background vocals); Jonathan Marx (trumpet, background vocals); John Delworth (acoustic & Fender Rhodes pianos, Hammond B-3 organ, Juno keyboard); Paul Burch Jr. (vibraphone); Marc Trovillion (bass); Allen Lowrey (drums); C. Scott Chase (percussion).
Additional personnel: Paul Booker (guitar); Tony Crow (piano); Matt Bach (bass); Ken Coomer (percussion); The Nashville String Machine.
Recorded at Sound Emporium, Studio 19 & The Beech House. Nashville, Tennessee.
Supposedly a concept album about the disgraced 37th president of the United States (though the lyrics make no recognizable statements about Richard Nixon's infamous life and times), Lambchop's fifth full-length was a powerful consolidation of the strengths they'd gained since their uncertain debut in 1994. Kurt Wagner's sometimes singing/ sometimes talking vocal style, and lyrics that were oblique to the point of seeing surreal, remained a matter of taste, but his melodies hit a new peak in their beauty and evocative spirit as he merged countrypolitan country, smooth R&B, and chamber pop in ambitious and intriguing ways. And as Lambchop swelled to 13 musicians (not counting guest musicians, a choir, and the string section), the arrangements became increasingly sophisticated as Wagner and his collaborators used their rich palette of sounds to inspire a wealth of moods -- from the easygoing groove of "Grumpus" to the luxurious sadness of "Nashville Parent" -- and helped to clarify and strengthen that which seemed uncertain in Wagner's lyrics. And given the sheer ambition of this album, Nixon is a milestone in independent record making, music constructed on a grand scale that's richly satisfying without seeming overdone or tricked up simply for its own sake. And regardless of how one feels about Wagner's abilities as a singer, when he lets his heart do the talking on numbers like "The Distance from Her to There" and "The Book I Haven't Read," his sincerity is undeniable and affecting. Calling Nixon Lambchop's masterpiece is to ignore the fine work they'd done before, and the similarly ambitious work that came afterward, but it is the point where they showed they were in full command of the tools and talents at their disposal, and its glorious eccentricities are as pleasurable as anything in their catalog. ~ Mark Deming

Professional Reviews

Rolling Stone (3/2/00, p.99) - 3.5 stars out of 5 - "...They're a little bit o' twang with a pinch of soul, a mini-orchestra that plays with the attitude of Salvation Army buskers and the chops of an indie-rock band....both profound and affectingly universal..."

Spin (5/00, p.158) - 9 out of 10 - "...Music that gently rattles the heavens....simple homilies...with so much beauty that they don't suggest a forgotten, mythical America so much as an overlooked workaday one..."

Q (1/01, p.93) - Included in Q's "50 Best Albums of 2000".

Q (3/00, p.102) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...accessible, clever and full of a rare integrity."

Uncut (p.104) - "All serious stuff, but the genius of Lambchop -- perfected here -- is the way the melodies rub balm into the pain."

Uncut (3/00, pp.73-4) - 5 stars out of 5 - "...NIXON is unequivocally the best example so far of what it is that they do that makes them so unique....One of the first great records of the new millennium..."

Alternative Press (5/00, p.93) - 3 out of 5 - "...Fascinating....drawing on the everyday minutiae that informed their previous LP's..."

Magnet (4-5/00, p.80) - "...NIXON is eccentric, exuberant and, ultimately, essential..."

CMJ (2/14/00, p.18) - "...booms with disco-tinged violin suites and a few genuinely funkified R&B numbers alongside understated and sinisterly clever tunes that are Wagner's trademark....interesting and playful..."

Melody Maker (2/8/00, p.47) - 3.5 stars out of 5 - "...consolidates mainman Kurt Wagner's position as one of the most innovative artists around..."

No Depression (3-4/00, p.112) - "...NIXON is wired up with primemoving, vintage Gibson guitar rendering Kurt Wagner's own version of country music....Lambchop try to constrain their smiles and just wink, but instrumentally they're as serious as thirteen heart attacks..."

Mojo (Publisher) (p.112) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "[A] restless masterpiece, 'The Old Gold Shoe' and 'Grumpus' tracing Wagner's strangely off-beat diurnal rhythms..."

Mojo (Publisher) (2/00, p.91) - "...[Kurt Wagner's] most romantic songs to date and also some of his bleakest....It's [Lambchop's] most fully realised record, the most perfect blend of their alt country roots and their obsession with soul..."

NME (Magazine) (12/30/00, p.78) - Ranked #13 in NME's "Top 50 Albums Of The Year".

NME (Magazine) (2/5/00, p.28) - 9 out of 10 - "...their greatest album....an astonishing work....an alt-country PET SOUNDS....a swooning wonder, covered in glory."

Pitchfork (Website) - "NIXON?is still an improbable album. The band never sounds like they're trying very hard and yet every song breaks some convention or another."

Uncut (magazine) (p.102) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "What was ravishing in every detail 10 years ago is ravishing still."