Thirty years into their wide and varied career, Nashville's Lambchop are attempting to start anew with a record called FLOTUS. Said to be exploring Krautrock, electronic music and '70s dance craze "The Hustle," the album arrives November 4 through Merge.
A press release notes that the title of the latest Lambchop collection is actually an acronym, which stands for "For Love Often Turns Us Still." It's further described as "a subtle masterpiece" from bandleader Kurt Wagner, who last left listeners with 2012's Mr. M.
While said to feature "beautifully nuanced arrangements," as on albums past, the new collection also finds pieces like "The Hustle" dabbling in Krautrock and hypnotic, early electronic music. The song is one of two extended pieces on the record and was partially inspired by learning about the titular old time disco dance move at a wedding.
Wagner explained in a statement:
My wife and I attended this wedding of one her colleagues in the countryside outside of Nashville. Weddings are a heady mix of emotions, memories, and events that can be quite rich in imagery. With this being a Quaker wedding, there was a lack of "officiating" in that the bride and groom addressed each other directly the entire time. This was something that I found to be most touching. Beyond that, as with much of my writing, I tend to describe experiences in an almost journalistic fashion and then strip things down till there is barely a thread to hold them together—in this case, starting with the vows and then moving on from there. The entire wedding party was doing this great synchronized dance step that I hadn't seen before. I asked my wife what dance it was, and she told me it was the Hustle. She suggested I join them. I respectfully declined.
Below, you can sample the austere, 18-minute song, which Merge is calling "one of the most impressive achievements of Lambchop's catalogue." There, you'll also find a significantly shorter album trailer. Pre-order information can be found here.
While Lambchop's last full-length arrived in 2012, Wagner had delivered a self-titled debut with electronic offshoot HeCTA in 2015.
A press release notes that the title of the latest Lambchop collection is actually an acronym, which stands for "For Love Often Turns Us Still." It's further described as "a subtle masterpiece" from bandleader Kurt Wagner, who last left listeners with 2012's Mr. M.
While said to feature "beautifully nuanced arrangements," as on albums past, the new collection also finds pieces like "The Hustle" dabbling in Krautrock and hypnotic, early electronic music. The song is one of two extended pieces on the record and was partially inspired by learning about the titular old time disco dance move at a wedding.
Wagner explained in a statement:
My wife and I attended this wedding of one her colleagues in the countryside outside of Nashville. Weddings are a heady mix of emotions, memories, and events that can be quite rich in imagery. With this being a Quaker wedding, there was a lack of "officiating" in that the bride and groom addressed each other directly the entire time. This was something that I found to be most touching. Beyond that, as with much of my writing, I tend to describe experiences in an almost journalistic fashion and then strip things down till there is barely a thread to hold them together—in this case, starting with the vows and then moving on from there. The entire wedding party was doing this great synchronized dance step that I hadn't seen before. I asked my wife what dance it was, and she told me it was the Hustle. She suggested I join them. I respectfully declined.
Below, you can sample the austere, 18-minute song, which Merge is calling "one of the most impressive achievements of Lambchop's catalogue." There, you'll also find a significantly shorter album trailer. Pre-order information can be found here.
While Lambchop's last full-length arrived in 2012, Wagner had delivered a self-titled debut with electronic offshoot HeCTA in 2015.