“If it’s me and yer granny on bongos, it’s the Fall.”
Thus spoke Mark E. Smith, singer and frontman of the Fall, the band he had helmed from 1976 right up until his passing almost exactly six years ago. These self-same sentiments could easily be ascribed to Kurt Wagner and his place in Lambchop. Lambchop is a band from Nashville, TN, but in essence, it is the creative vehicle of Wagner, the man who has been their de facto leader and sole constant member since their musical life began in 1986.
Some sixteen albums down the line Lambchop is represented here in Leeds tonight by Kurt Wagner and Andrew Broder who could rightly take great exception to being described as “yer granny on bongos.” He is, in fact, the hugely talented Minneapolis-based multi-instrumentalist, producer, and man behind the ambient project Fog who worked closely with Wagner on Lambchop’s last two studio albums, Showtunes and The Bible.
Part of a tour of Europe and the UK showcasing “an intimate piano performance from Lambchop”, this is the second of two nights the two men will play together at a sold-out Howard Assembly Room. The fact that these are the only English dates on this leg of the tour marks something of a major booking coup for the Howard Assembly Room, reinforcing its status as a live performance venue of some renown.
Just over a year ago, and only a couple of months after the release of The Bible, Kurt Wagner had talked to the American online music magazine Brooklyn Vegan. During that interview he spoke about those things in life that still inspire him, saying, “To know that making anything is still worth the shit it stirs up. I still get up each day and hope that there’s something new out there to change my mind and make me glad I did.”
Kurt Wagner could easily have had this collaboration with Andrew Broder and these concerts in mind when he was having that conversation. For here is a brand new musical adventure, an experimental journey upon which both men have embarked, unsure of where it may eventually lead them. Tonight Kurt Wagner is accompanied solely by Broder’s Steinway piano where they proceed to strip back more than a dozen Lambchop songs – ranging from a couple off the band’s fourth album, 1995’s How I Quit Smoking, one of which is a stunning encore of ‘Theöne’, to half a dozen from The Bible – leading us right to their very heart, their very being, revealing much about Wagner and the intense emotion that lies therein as they do so. It is unquestionably brave, occasionally uncomfortable, but never anything less than completely compelling.
Dressed in a brass-buttoned blazer over an open-necked white shirt and dark hoodie, a pair of casual slacks, and what by now is his customary trucker’s cap, Kurt Wagner looks more like a chap on his way to the local garden centre than someone who is about to bare their soul. The almost theatrical waving of his arms as he begins to conduct Broder’s exquisite piano melodies, though, indicates there is going to be far more to this occasion than just a mere trip down to Homebase.
“The room was warmer than it should be, The light in there was barely there.” The opening lines to ‘His Song Is Sung’, the opening song from The Bible has never sounded so alive, Kurt Waganer’s voice shorn of any studio Auto-tune or vocoder adornment is so intimate, so real, every breath, nuance, texture, and thrilling vibrato of that gloriously deep timbre exposed for us all to hear.
‘His Song Is Sung’ bleeds into ‘Dylan at the Mousetrap’ into ‘Give It’, seamlessly, not even pausing for breath as the latter dovetails into a coda of Talking Heads’ ‘Once In A Lifetime.’ It is hardly the same as it ever was.
Poor Fred MacMurray, the renowned American actor from the Golden Age Of Hollywood comes in for some harsh treatment during ‘Daisy’, perhaps rekindling in Kurt Wagner vengeful memories of the duplicitous role that MacMurray had played in Double Indemnity. It is there for us all to see and hear, another one in what is a litany of Wagner’s issues and concerns from the private to the public, the abstract to the absurd, and as he is to later tell us during a truly inspired ‘The New Cobweb Summer‘, the link between profound and pain. They are all equally weighted, each as musically mysterious and as spiritually enlightening as the next, and all make for the most breathtaking of experiences.
Photos: Simon Godley
