Venue: Tvornica / Zagreb / Croatia
Concert date: 29.11.2006
Attendance: 700
Ticket price: 160,00 HRK
Zagreb, last Thursday of November, a few hours before the show by Nashville’s most “fucked up” alt-country outfit Lambchop, is resting totally calm and carefree in its pre-Advent look. On the wall of the Tvornica club, next to the main entrance, there’s a jumbo poster of a little lamb, the same one that adorns the band’s ticket. Round the back, at the side entrance/exit, a smaller band poster is barely noticeable. Good thing the band’s tour bus is parked right next to it, which finally jolts the still-not-quite-awake mind into realizing what’s coming tonight. And when a man strolls past, hidden under a hood, with only the brim of a baseball cap and dark-rimmed glasses showing, and greets us with an extremely low, deep “hello”, it turns out to be none other than Kurt Wagner himself, the band’s driving force, and it’s instantly clear that Lambchop are wide awake, even if the city is still a little sleepy!
On this European tour the band is joined by the two-piece Hands Off Cuba, whose two members, Scott Martin and Ryan Norris, also play in Lambchop, which this time, counting those two, numbers eight members. Before that, they were accompanied by The Dafo String Quartet, who have been loyal collaborators of the band for a few years now, in the studio and on stage. But they won’t be here tonight, since they wrapped up their joint shows for the year a few days before the Zagreb gig, in Lucerne, Switzerland.
The Tvornica hall filled up fast around nine in the evening, and it was already almost full about twenty minutes after the singer and guitarist Kurt Wagner and bass player Matt Swanson unexpectedly showed up on stage. Turns out they had only come to check the instruments, and surely the crowd too! They left as quickly as they came, and the excitement in the hall calmed down a bit again. After that came at least another fifteen minutes of waiting before the club music and the house lights finally gave way to what was happening on stage.
Three young guys rush onto the stage, each grabs his instrument, and the instrumental sonic adventure begins. Besides the two Hands Off Cuba members already mentioned, Scott Martin on drums and Ryan Norris on keyboards, synths and guitar, they’re joined by the youngest member of Lambchop, William Tyler on guitar. The music they make for the next twenty minutes is built mostly on the intensity of sound rather than on concrete melodies, much in the style of the “sonic intros” that decorate Lambchop’s latest album, “Damaged”. Among other things, Tyler even played his guitar with a toothbrush! So much for dedication to the music!
Hands Off Cuba actually shaped their set so that in the end it worked like one long sonic intro to the opening song of the Lambchop show, with the band taking their places on stage in the meantime. Paperback Bible, an intimate song about searching for and losing faith, sounded this time more like losing, well, everything! The reason was technical: there were plenty of sound problems, and the vocals suffered most. Wagner showed it brilliantly by turning this otherwise extremely quiet and vocally soothing song into a downright “hissing”, cynical story, delivered in a voice impossible to ignore! The technical problems were sorted out soon enough, and luckily this more direct and slightly rougher approach to interpreting the songs stayed with Wagner to the very end! It’s worth mentioning here that his voice is an incredible instrument, one that goes from deep, loud singing to a gentle whisper, all in a single breath! They continued with two more songs from the same album, Prepared (2) and The Rise And Fall Of Letter P, and then took a trip back to older stuff, mostly from better-known albums like “How I Quit Smoking” and “Is A Woman”. They also played Let’s Go Bowling from their debut “I Hope You’re Sitting Down / Jack’s Tulips”, which came out all the way back in 1994. The biggest attention, of course, went to the current album, the backbone of this tour, “Damaged”. And they proved what an exceptional, standout record it is live too, despite stiff competition from the other seven or eight (depending on whether you count “Aw C’mon and “No You C’mon” as one, a double, or two separate) studio albums. Interestingly, from the critically acclaimed “Nixon” they played only Nasville Parents. Another curious thing: the crowd seemed a bit restless through the whole show, as if they wanted faster and louder songs, yet they reacted best to the songs from “Is A Woman”, which counts as the band’s quietest album.
The whole concert also came with a visual show: giant white spheres hung from the stage ceiling and served as screens for video projections. Though not literally connected, sound and image turned out to go hand in hand! During the lyrically lighter songs we saw birds in calm flight, vague human figures, and the even, soothing swell of the sea, while the musically and especially lyrically more “aggressive” and difficult songs brought rodeo footage, a drag-race car crash, crows pecking at each other, an owl in a claustrophobic shot, probably from a nest inside a tree trunk, and a raging, utterly restless sea tearing across a reef. A friend and I later came to realize that these visuals didn’t work equally well across the whole hall. From where she stood in the back, apparently not everything looked as striking as it did right by the stage. The sound was also a bit worse at the back, and sadly you could hear the chatty crowd way too much.
Between songs, the band members were slowly introduced to us. Tony Crow on piano has obviously earned a reputation as the band’s chattiest member, entertaining the audience and the band alike with a joke at every show. Here he told one about “fucking french toast”, which sort of hung in the air and was funny mostly because of the other members’ horrified reactions. On top of that, a nicely warmed-up Tony offered every following introduced member, except Wagner, loyally to the girls of Zagreb. So: the already mentioned William Tyler, Ryan Norris and Scott Martin, then Sam Baker on drums (on some of the quieter songs he played the drums with his bare hands, no sticks!), Matt Swanson on bass, the most hidden member of the band, Alex McManus on guitar, and of course on vocals and guitar, Kurt Wagner. A tight, energetic bunch of hugely talented and, above all, very team-minded musicians.
While the middle of the set was dedicated to somewhat quieter, vocally calmer songs, toward the end they returned to the sharper numbers, and Wagner’s singing again became angry and downright frightening, something rarely heard on the records. Somewhere near the end of the show he broke one of the nails on his left hand, which visibly got in the way of his guitar picking, and that was why they skipped the song The One in the encore, he told me after the show. They closed the official part with an outstanding version of Decline Of Western Country And Civilization. Convincing in every way, which of course made the crowd loudly demand an encore, and after a few minutes all the members really did come back on stage.
Everyone comes back looking (at least on the surface) just as they left, except Kurt Wagner, who returned as a completely different person! Jekyll for the whole show and Hyde in the encore! With a lit cigarette in his hand he walks across the stage to his chair and sort of half sits down on it. The band “kicks off” a cover of Corrosion, originally by Sisters Of Mercy, and I say “kicks off” because Lambchop hadn’t played with such force, almost brutality, all night! Through the whole song Wagner looked possessed by something, something unfriendly and downright terrifying! Somewhere between sitting and half standing, a hunched apparition you wouldn’t want to meet after sundown, he shoved the mic stand toward the by-now equally manic crowd, as if craving a fight with them (with us), a fight in which they’d have no chance of winning despite the numbers. And he knew it! Could a few technical problems at the start of the show really be to blame for all this?
The second and truly final song of the encore and of the whole concert was Give It, from the X-Press 2 project album, on which Wagner contributed vocals. Lambchop’s version only carried on and even escalated the already thoroughly frenzied atmosphere, which went beyond all expectations, obviously those of the band and the crowd alike. When Wagner reached the end of the lyrics he sighed as if he’d just run a marathon, or as if he’d finally been freed from whatever devilishly possessed him for those few minutes. He bowed to the crowd, grabbed his little book, probably with the lyrics, and left the stage. The rest of the band stayed a few more moments and brought the song and the night to an end. A few thank-yous and bows, and the stage stood empty in the dark. But the energy in the air, which felt as if lightning had struck the stage, lingered for a few more minutes and the crowd was now truly fired up. Thunderous applause echoed through the hall for almost ten minutes! Slowly, out of this overflowing euphoria, the fact emerged that an encore like that simply can’t be topped. Brilliant and unbelievable!
The cherry on top came from Kurt Wagner, who signed autographs in the area where they were selling T-shirts and the band’s “tour only” CD (Succulence, for 100 kuna; the next day I checked whether it could be found on eBay and it can, for a cool 100 $!!!). After a few words and a handshake, an already extraordinary evening became the stuff dreams are made of! Until next time!
PS: Warm greetings to Petra and thanks once again for the mandarin!
Setlist
01. Paperback Bible
02. Prepared (2)
03. The Rise And Fall Of Letter P
04. Nothing But A Blur From A Bullet Train
05. Nashville Parents
06. I Would Have Waited Here All Day
07. The New Cobweb Summer
08. Let’s Go Bowling
09. My Blue Wave
10. Caterpillar
11. We Never Argue
12. The Daily Growl
13. Smuckers
14. Crackers
15. Fear
16. Militant
17. Decline Of Country And Western Civilization
—encore—
18. This Corrosion
19. Give It
Lineup : LAMBCHOP
Kurt Wagner . Vocals, guitar
William Tyler . Guitar
Tony Crow . Piano
Sam Baker . Drums
Matt Swanson . Bass guitar
Alex McManus . Guitar
Scott Martin . Synthesizers
Ryan Norris . Keyboards, synthesizers
Lineup : HANDS OFF CUBA
Scott Martin . Drums
Ryan Norris . Keyboards, guitar, synthesizers
William Tyler . Guitar
