If there were ever to be a biopic made about you, reader (which there probably won’t be – c’mon look in the mirror – but play along won’t you), Lambchop are just the kind of band you’d want scoring your true widescreen moments. Your more contemplative times, your graceful elder years especially, running in the park on a Sunday morning with your first love amongst the autumn leaves, in slow-mo, tinged in sepia. They have exuded gold-sealed class for nigh on a decade now, though it’s no criticism that it feels like longer. It is grand music, marinated in seasons and history and other past grand musics taken from numerous avenues of sound. And occasionally it goes beyond that, cutting loose, stylishly of course.
And with this double release, as such for prolific reasons rather than any grandiose pretentiousness, and packaged together, appealingly, quaintly titled, we find them presented at their absolute vintage best. Many refer to the collective’s 2000 masterpiece ‘Nixon’ as their insurmountable peak, which they parachuted down from with the sparser follow-up ‘Is A Woman’. That is not necessarily a view endorsed by this writer, amongst its slender arrangements Kurt Wagner was underlined as a more singular voice, and one to treasure at that. But their return to the lush, encapsulating fullness of ‘Nixon’ on these two records is more than welcome.
If we were to choose between the pair, it’s the more insistent second half, ‘No, You C’mon’, that beckons us back more frequently. It ebbs and surges, touring their range and remaining exquisite and well postured, from the Magnetic Fieldsy ‘Sunrise’, to the blistering Velvet Underground heads-down chase ‘Nothing Adventurous Please’ and the catchy Stonesy blues of ‘Shang A Dang Dang’. ‘Aw C’mon’ is the more orchestral of the duo, floating around on a more melancholy cloud. And songs like ‘Nothing But A Blur From A Bullet Train’ and the secluded jazzy ‘I Hate Candy’ are sumptuous with a very heavy quality. The two discs together create the soundtrack to the end of whatever night you’re having. Aside from the pumped-up, riotous type, natch. This is just the kind of consistency Lou Reed probably dreams of.