Lambchop
FLOTUS (Merge)
Kurt Wagner might deserve this year’s indie Lifetime Achievement Award. While recording as Lambchop for more than 20 years, he has ably covered a waterfront of styles, from string-laden alt-country to hipster soul and mellow indie-pop. To boot, he’s given us a bounty of wry titles like “Cigaretiquette” and “The Petrified Florist,” continuing the tradition on FLOTUS with “Directions to the Can.”
In recent years, Wagner has strengthened his knack for crafting deceptively simple soundscapes while dialing back his squawkier vocal affectations. On most of FLOTUS, Wagner’s voice is actually processed with a vocoder; he sounds like a day-drunk android, but it’s oddly fitting over patient songs like “JFK” and “Howe.” And patience is one demand that Wagner makes on FLOTUS; most tracks have a static groove, and it’s easy to feel pent-up, especially during the two songs that bookend the album for a total of 30 minutes. But Wagner overlays enough shifting aural ornaments to maintain momentum—which also sounds like an apt summary of his career so far.
Shagwüf
¡Salvaje! (self)
As a band name, Shagwüf carries a mix of nastiness and WTF—is it about lupine sex? Is it a hairstyle? The crosscurrents turn out to be apt prep for ¡Salvaje!, which combines bashy blues-rock with unmistakable mirth. Erstwhile solo artists Sally Rose and Sweet Pete Stallings trade lead vocals and hold down the bass and guitar slots, while Jaguardini’s Ivan Christo adds early-’70s organ adornments and Pablo Olivieri methodically atomizes the drum kit.
Though ¡Salvaje! steeps in heavy stoner grooves, diversions hint at Shagwüf’s range. The galloping rhythm of “Swamp D” gives way to a blues boogie passage and then falls through a hole to briefly touch on soft psychedelia before recharging. There’s also an elegiac, Floyd-like instrumental—the too-brief “Hold Steady, Rich!”—as well as the catchy “Fight Like a Girl,” which boasts a cathartic sing-along chorus and a killer curlicue guitar riff. Elsewhere, Shagwüf belies prevailing sonic malevolence with lines such as “I’m in my cheetah chariot / I feed my cheetahs on baby carrots.” Shagwüf takes its contrasts to the stage on November 25 at the Southern.
MV & EE
Root/Void (Woodsist)
MV & EE comprises Matt Valentine and Erika Elder, and according to allmusic.com, the Vermont duo has released 17 albums since 2006—although their Wikipedia page includes three dozen titles going back to 2001. This might suggest uneven output, but polarizing is more the case—some find their entire catalog to be loathsome hippie garbage, while acolytes like Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo and James Jackson “Wooden Wand” Toth happily follow MV & EE down whatever psychedelic rabbit holes they dive into.
And they dive deep, seemingly hitting “record” every time they take out various guitars, Indian string instruments, keyboards, percussion, etc. Sometimes, coordinated singing indicates an actual plan afoot, and as they’ve proved on occasion, MV & EE are capable of actual songs, albeit songs that resemble Neil Young coming out of anesthesia—“feel alright” is the prime example on Root/Void. Otherwise, sunburned, wide-lens soundscapes of drony, stony guitars dominate, establishing a vibrating presence so organic it nearly becomes ambient. Some might forget there’s an album playing. Others will have left the room a long time ago. Win-win?