Album Review: Floatus, Lambchop

Not a paean to the First Lady of the United States, the acronym at the heart of Lambchop’s 12th album is far more romantic: For Love Often Turns Us Still. The Nashville pioneers first hit critical and commercial paydirt when their fifth long-player, 2000’s Nixon, topped many end-of-year polls and catapulted the collective into the mainstream. The band has always been a revolving door of musicians, with Kurt Wagner the maestro at the centre of it all, conducting his oddball orchestra as they flirted with alt. country, lounge and soul.

This album is apparently Wagner’s “homage” to hip-hop acts, including Kanye, Kendrick and Frank Ocean, “garbled through grocery store speakers and tiny cell phones.” Not that you’d guess that from gorgeous opener ‘In Care Of 8675309’. Indeed, Flotus is bookended by two magnificent slabs of prime Lambchop, songs that deserve their place amidst the very best in Wagner’s canon.

The aforementioned opening salvo is almost 12 minutes of gentle vocals, tenderly strummed guitars and the occasional drum flourish, washing over the listener on a bed of warm electronica. There’s a splash of country here, a sprinkling of soul there, and its stately beauty is best listened to on headphones.

The closing, 18-minute ‘The Hustle’ is apparently inspired by a synchronised dance step seen at a quaker wedding, which will not be immediately obvious to anyone, from Wagner’s typically oblique lyrics. It actually takes over five minutes of insistent electronics before the singer’s beautifully bruised vocal enters the fray, and the fact that it sounds quite at home amid the hypnotic rhythms and swathes of synths says a lot about the 58-year-old’s ability to embrace different genres.

Few of the nine songs wedged in between these two stunners hit anything like those heights, as Wagner gets too comfortable with a vocoder, rendering his vocals almost completely indecipherable. There are some pretty moments, like the stately jazz shuffle of ‘Directions To The Can’, the Bon Iver-like title track or the lovely ‘Writer’, where the singer’s southern falsetto lists a litany of changes over a slow syncopated rhythm. Too often, however, Wagner’s mutterings blend into the background, and songs like ‘Relatives #2’, ‘Howe’ and ‘NIV’ are instantly forgettable. A pity: at its best, Flotus is truly magnificent.