Over the course of Lambchop’s two decade-plus career, they have been remarkably consistent. Even with their various lineup shifts, there have never been any tumultuous breakups, no big reunions, no major controversies. Any of their 12 studio releases could reasonably be your favorite. But while each of their albums sound unmistakably like Lambchop, no two of them sound quite alike; from the bouncy alt-country of Thriller, to the stark lounge folk of Is a Woman, through the sweetly orchestrated ballads of their last album, 2012’s excellent Mr. M. As a frontman, Kurt Wagner—with his inimitable baritone, like an agoraphobic Bill Callahan—has also shifted and stretched in his own quiet way. Sometimes he’ll greet you with a pre-coffee grumble; other times, he’s singing in the shower with a wispy falsetto. Like any good leading man, Wagner redefines himself for the role he’s playing, but he never lets you forget that he’s in control.
So while FLOTUS, the band’s Vocoder-drenched, largely electronic new album, might initially feel like a shock, the reinvention is not entirely unprecedented. Last year saw the release of The Diet, an album by Lambchop side project HeCTA– featuring Wagner, as well as drummer Scott Martin and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Norris– that found Wagner singing his characteristic melodies over dance beats and au-courant synths (“You shouldn’t have to change a thing, except your mind,” he sang in the album’s highlight). Those ideas come into full bloom throughout the nearly-70 minute FLOTUS, though it’s less tentative and more seamless, with even Wagner’s vocals sounding like an instrument in the mix (this is not merely Lambchopped and Screwed). Like Bon Iver on 22, A Million, Lambchop exist here as a modern Americana act refusing their genre’s assumed aesthetics. But unlike the post-Yeezus cacophony of 22, A Million, FLOTUS is as lush and gorgeous as any of Lambchop’s past work, sometimes floating by with the luxurious chill of hotel lobby music, but never losing its sense of direction.
With the majority of the album eschewing traditional song structure, the most immediate way to listen to FLOTUS is as a bridge between its twin epics: the opening “In Care of 8675309” and its closer, “The Hustle.” In Lambchop’s lineage of long, slow-burning album openers, “8675309” is their longest and their slowest-burning. It also serves as a smooth gateway into the band’s new sound, with Wagner’s heavily effected vocals–like the church organ setting on a cheap keyboard with the speakers muffled–rising from tentative opening notes to full-blown crooning by the end, accompanying one of the album’s best melodies. Wagner has cited both Kendrick Lamar and Shabazz Palaces as inspirations for his new direction, but a more fitting reference here might be Future, whose use of Auto-Tune is less ornamental and more foundational to his very cadence and word choice. As such, “8675309” is not merely a great Lambchop song with a weird vocal effect; it’s a great Lambchop song because of the weird vocal effect.