Smashing Bumpkins

There's a one-band revolution brewing in Nashville, home of rhinestones, bad hairpieces, designer cowboy hats and styleless songwriters for hire. Amidst the glitzy clothes and dusty clichés lurks the boldly subversive Lambchop, a stage-collapsing horde (ten members or so, depending on who can get the night off) that's busily gnawing away at hayseed complacency from within. Compare Nashville's usual chart-toppers with Lambchop's disturbing tangle of morose narratives, laconic vocals and perversely overstuffed arrangements, and you'll realize that country music may never be the same again.

Singer/songwriter/guitarist Kurt Wagner just laughs when labeled a Nashville outlaw. "I don't know if I should give myself that much credit. I'd just like to think that we're trying to create something a little different within the context of Nashville. I don't know if 'outlaw' is the correct term. I think they just think I'm a kook here, mainly because they can't relate to our music. We've pretty much gone unrecognized in the music community here. It's mighty scary."

"I always try to look at Lambchop as a Nashville band," continues Wagner, surprisingly animated given his near-comatose singing style. "I feel like I represent a point of view that's coming out of Nashville, because myself and several of the other people [in Lambchop] grew up here. That's one of the reasons why I think of our music as country beyond just having a steel guitar in it or something. We're from this place, this place that spawned country music, and maybe what we've learned in our growing up is more legitimate than somebody who comes in from Minnesota, puts on a hat and calls himself country. I think we lay claim to a little more than that. Even historically, I've started noticing parallels between the Nashville sound of the '60s and what we do. It's just taking a raw aesthetic, adding a lot of instruments and then recording it in kind of a grand way. They did it with hillbilly kind of stuff, and we're doing it with the punk thing that we grew up on."

Admittedly, Wagner is an unlikely rebel. Older than most musical upstarts (37), recently married and still faithful to his day job (he lays down hardwood floors -- not exactly the stuff of poetry), he repeatedly stresses the virtues of the "normal life." You see, this whole rock-star bit was a complete accident.

"We didn't seek to do any of this," he says. "I'm totally happy just playing in the basement, which is what we were doing. Everything we've done, we've been asked to do. It's not like we solicit ourselves in any way. I mean, we were just getting together and playing at home, and somehow Mac [of Merge/Superchunk] heard some stuff and asked if we wanted to put out a single. We said yeah, and it just went from there."

Lambchop's 1994 debut, I Hope You're Sitting Down, was no minor diversion, however. With its 67-minute length and staggering instrument roster (clarinet, cello, harp, trombone, sax, banjo, mandolin, ukulele...), the album unmistakably announced one of the indie world's most exciting new acts. Songs like "Soaky In The Pooper" (basically a detailed ode to retching) and "Breathe Deep" (about a man with a bizarre air-freshener fixation) displayed Wagner's deft knack for imagery, while "Cowboy On The Moon," "Betweemus" and "Bon Soir, Bon Soir" showed a sublime melodic sense.

The group's new disk, the ironically titled How I Quit Smoking (wishful thinking on Wagner's part), is a bit shorter but just as ambitious. While mellower and less eclectic than the debut, its instrumental palette is even richer, thanks to polished string arrangements by Nashville veteran John Mock. Mock himself also plays recorder and tin whistle, adding beautiful touches to "Suzieju" and "The Scary Caroler." Other treats include the lovely "The Man Who Loved Beer," the breathtakingly intimate "Theöne," "All Smiles And Mariachi" and two opposing versions of the surging "The Militant." Perhaps most revealing of all is "Garf," a mocking look at the current country scene. (Hint: "Garf" equals "Garth.")

"I tried to make the most expensive, sophisticated kind of record that we were capable of doing," says Wagner. "I wanted to see what that would end up being. So of course, we blew every dime we had and came up with this. That was the concept: to try to take it a little bit out of the realm of total spontaneity. We wanted to keep some of that, but at the same time, refine some things that ended up sounding pretty cool on the other record."

The refining process was a peculiar case of synthesis. First, the core of the band arrived at a satisfactory take through its usual erratic means. Those tapes were then shipped off to Mock, who wrote complementary arrangements for an expert (presumably tolerant) string quintet. The result is a fascinating contrast of styles and abilities.

"With the way we work, it's nice to catch some of the things that happen, because the chances of them happening exactly like that again are pretty slim," Wagner chuckles. "People have gotten a little more sophisticated in what they do, as far as playing, but I still try to keep things as much off-balance as I can. I like having that little bit of freshness there.

"I don't play with these guys because they're really great musicians," he continues. "We play together because we like each other's company. We have a good time. The fact that they're great musicians or not is secondary. It's more important that we get along as friends."

Despite their friendship, touring hasn't worked out well. Fitting 10 people onto one stage has been a chore (obviously), and then there's that issue of "normality" again. "I really cling to having a normal life," Wagner says. "That goes for the rest of the band as well. They all have lives and I wouldn't necessarily say 'careers,' but.... [laugh] I think there's a way to do this music thing and still be a normal guy with a normal life, and yet somehow get some satisfaction out of this. Unfortunately, we can only devote x amount of time to going out and doing stuff. We're just trying to be selective about what we do."

For the same reason, Lambchop has ignored all major-label inquiries. Wagner himself barely can handle even Merge's demands on his time.

"It still blows my mind. It has sort of snowballed into this full-time job, on top of my full-time job. So needless to say, I don't get a whole lot of time off. I'm not complaining -- I'm doing what I like to do, and I don't tour a lot so I do get time to spend with my wife and my friends. But it becomes more and more consuming. And of course from my perspective, it's all my fault, because I want to put out more and more stuff. The putting-out is great. It's like a bonus -- I just want to record the stuff. To me, that's where the real satisfaction comes from: just making these sounds."