Double chop kooky

Lambchop’s double whammy of not one but two full length albums, Awcmon and Noyoucmon, comes at an interesting time for entertainment formats. Outkast’s Speakerboxx/The Love Below is still tearing up the charts and two of the most rewarding releases of 2003 were the Love and Life albums from The Tycho Brahe. Thanks to the advent of DVDs and blockbuster epics like The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, audiences appear to be more disposed towards watching films that last over three hours or a television feature like Angels In America weighing in at a whopping six and a half hours. After years of so-called dumbing down and ever shortening attention spans, there may be at least some kind of movement towards entertainment that offers more substance. Business as usual so for a band that titled a tour CD Pet Sounds Sucks.

“There is an emerging sort of a new context of ideas for music,” says Lambchop Lieutenant Kurt Wagner. “I’m interested in the increased accessibility that technology gives us. We realised that there wasn’t a big cost involved in doing two CDs, so it was a natural reaction to the amount of material we had written. Today, you present your music differently and expand on the visual side of it. Also, you can combine or separate it and make extra information available. It’s something we want to explore more.
“Creatively, the idea was to put out two records,” Kurt continues. “It was a passive idea to put them together and a box made the record company more comfortable with the idea. It offers more value for money and I must stress that there is no obligation on the listener to take it all in over one sitting,” he laughs.
“I like the thing of having two objects you can compare also. Initially, I thought Awcmon was a better record but then I thought, ‘Hey, Noyoucmon is a great record!’ That changes all the time. I like the idea of two seemingly identical glasses and you pick the one you want to drink out of and they both offer completely different tastes and flavours. I also warm to the concept of dynamism. If you place two things together it can be a more powerful experience. It’s the whole artistic dichotomy of yin and yang or whatever.”
Lambchop’s success in the wake of their 2000 album Nixon has afforded Kurt the luxury of packing in the day job.
“Three years ago I retired from floorwalking and labouring,” he reveals. “It was just before Is A Woman came out. I don’t miss the work physically as a forty something labourer, but there was a part of me that enjoyed the independence of doing music and it not being tied into my livelihood.”

Lambchop play the Gaiety on Sunday March 28. Youcmon and Noyoucmon are out now on City Slang