Lambchop: Punching the Clown review – spectral, spellbindingly ambiguous stirring of US history

(City Slang) Sounding weathered but undimmed, Kurt Wagner feels as if he’s standing right in front of you as he sings superb, choir-swathed songs that invite and unsettle Thirty-two years on from their debut album – and 26 from Nixon , the gorgeous country/soul confection that brought “Nashville’s most fucked-up country band” to a wider audience – Lambchop find themselves in a curious position.

Their sole continuous member Kurt Wagner has displayed an admirable disinclination to rest on his laurels.

He followed up Nixon with the austere, piano-driven Is a Woman and subsequently diverted into electronics, smothered his voice in Auto-Tune and distortion.

Their last album, 2022’s The Bible , threw up everything from house music to glitchy rhythms to ambient drift to accompany Wagner’s pained ruminations on mortality and faith.

Throughout, Lambchop have kept up a remarkable level of quality control that’s meant they’ve ended up being slightly underrated or at least taken for granted.

There’s been no career-defining crossover hit, no unexpected viral success, no foundation-shaking disaster followed by an attention-grabbing return to form; just a stream of really good albums and positive reviews.

It’s the kind of steady success that’s hard to maintain but easy to overlook in an attention-deficit economy.

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