Lambchop Gets Banjo-y With Justin Vernon

Three decades in, Lambchop is still finding new ways to sound like no one else, including itself. The long-running Nashville collective led by Kurt Wagner will return Aug. 21 with Punching the Clown (Merge), its 17th album and latest left turn in a catalog that’s veered from alt-country murmur to glitchy soul and minimalist abstraction.

Produced by Ryan Olson (Poliça, Gayngs) and co-written with Lambchop member Andrew Broder, Punching the Clown was recorded in three days at April Base, the Wisconsin studio owned by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. Vernon also contributes banjo, while a six-part choir threads throughout the album. First single “Weakened” is a deceptively slight track that doubles as the album’s only use of percussion (castanets, no less). Wagner’s official comment on the song? “People seem to really like this one!”

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In a typically elliptical note, Wagner traced the album’s origins to a fleeting, almost anonymous musical encounter:

“in early 2024 i heard a song on the radio on my way to get some gas.
just a minimal single chord strummed banjo and a small group of voices.
it seemed perfect in the moment as the moment became perfect in itself.
i never found out who it was, sounded kinda like early country gospel?
in a time of searching i discovered a type of gospel singing known as lined out singing
which is said to have begun in the late 1800s in scotland.
it migrated to appalachia and became an obscure root of american gospel, country.…
a spontaneous call and response type of acapella singing led by a clerk with a chorus of singers
revealing the raw beauty and power of the human voice with its unique varieties
its unadorned simplicity gave weight to the words as they were sung.
i wanted to make a record that emulated this kind of music.”

Lambchop will play its first U.S. shows since 2022 in support of Punching the Clown, beginning with a monthly July-September residency at Crooners Supper Club in Minneapolis and followed by gigs in Chicago and Brooklyn, N.Y. A two-leg European tour will take place in October/November and then in February.

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