Lambchop - Showtunes (LP) - 45RPM White Vinyl

Kurt Wagner has been quietly rewriting the Lambchop playbook for years, but Showtunes feels like one of his boldest pivots. Released on May 21, 2021 by Merge Records in the US and City Slang in Europe, it takes the band’s long, curious arc from country-soul collective to digital-age chamber project and leans into something tender and theatrical. The title is a real hint. These songs move like small scenes, built from piano-like MIDI figures, soft horns, and Wagner’s familiar baritone, which sits right at the center like a narrator in a dim orchestra pit.

The origin story is plain enough. Instead of leaning on guitars, Wagner translated his chord shapes into MIDI and wrote at an almost phantom piano, then invited players to color in the space. The result lands in a strange and lovely lane that is not quite Broadway and not quite the electro-soul abstraction of FLOTUS or This Is What I Wanted to Tell You. There is very little traditional percussion here, so every breath counts. Horns sigh, reeds blur at the edges, and the vocal lines hang with a conversational weight that suits the material.

“A Chef’s Kiss,” the lead single, sets the tone. It drifts in on a patient figure and then opens like a curtain, Wagner singing with that weathered gentleness that can make a single line feel like a confidante leaning across the table. “The Last Benedict” follows that spell with a slow shimmy, pretty on the surface yet pricked with little harmonic turns that make you sit up. The song titles alone carry Wagner’s wry humor. “Papa Was a Rolling Stone Journalist” is the one people always point to, a grin-inducing twist that still lands as a solid piece of writing once the smile fades. The wordplay is fun, the arrangement is the hook.

What keeps Showtunes engaging is the way it balances experiment with hospitality. Wagner is not out to dazzle with complexity. He gives you motifs you can hum, but the layout is sly. Voices and horns arrive from odd angles, keys cluster in slightly off-kilter ways, and yet there is always a chair pulled out for the listener. Reviewers picked up on that warmth. The record drew thoughtful notices from places like Pitchfork, The Guardian, and Uncut, each noting how it extends Lambchop’s late-era reinvention without losing the humane core that has kept fans close since the Nixon and Is A Woman days.

If you have followed Wagner’s interviews around this period, the approach makes sense. He was thinking about how songs might live on a stage, how a melody carries a scene, how a small musical gesture can sketch a character. You can hear it in the patient pacing. Many tracks bloom slowly, like a rehearsal room moving toward a performance, but they never get showy. There is a humility here that lines up with the best Lambchop writing, that everyday poetry he has always favored.

On vinyl, these textures really breathe. The quiet dynamics and soft brass feel especially at home on a turntable, where you can lean in and catch the small details that slip past on a quick stream. If you are hunting for Lambchop vinyl, Showtunes is the sleeper that rewards a full side A, lights low, no interruptions. Showtunes vinyl turns up through Merge and City Slang stockists, and it sits neatly beside earlier pressings, a marker of the band’s 21st century phase. Fans who buy Lambchop records online will find it bundled with the later run of albums, but it stands apart in mood. If you are browsing a Melbourne record store, it is the kind of sleeve you flip past, pause, and then decide to take home for a weekend listen. For collectors searching Lambchop albums on vinyl or even crate-digging among vinyl records Australia shops, it is a smart pick that deepens the picture of what this group can do.

There is a temptation to frame Showtunes as an experiment, something off to the side, but time has been kind to it already. It plays like a clear chapter in their story, a bridge from the Auto-Tune shimmer of FLOTUS to the more collaged textures that followed. It is also a reminder that Wagner remains one of our most quietly distinctive songwriters. He trusts space. He trusts small changes. He trusts his voice to carry the feeling without leaning on volume or spectacle.

Put simply, this is a late-night Lambchop record. It asks for patience, then returns the favor with small revelations. If that sounds like your lane, you will want this one in the stack, and if you are filling a cart with Lambchop vinyl, consider Showtunes the record you reach for when the house is still and the next hour is yours.