Lambchop - Trip (LP) - Yellow Vinyl

Lambchop’s Trip landed on 13 November 2020, right in the middle of a year that left a lot of musicians grounded and reflective. It suits the moment. Rather than push further into the processed textures of FLOTUS and This (Is What I Wanted to Tell You), Kurt Wagner and company turned inward with a six song set of covers that feels communal and quietly bold. Released by Merge Records in the US and City Slang in Europe, Trip reads like a postcard from a band that knows its own skin, even when it is wearing someone else’s songs.

The premise is simple and quite lovely. Each member of the then touring unit chose a song for the group to tackle, and the band followed that thread. You can hear the affection in the way these tunes are handled, not as exercises in taste but as ways of being together in a room, even when the world outside was shut. The centrepiece is their take on Wilco’s Reservations, long and tender, a slow build that gives Wagner’s voice time to lean into every vowel. Where Wilco’s original drifts like city lights in rain, Lambchop bring out a late night hush, piano and guitar moving like careful footsteps on floorboards. It is reverent without feeling precious, and it earns every minute.

What makes Trip feel more than a stopgap is the way Lambchop balance fidelity and invention. The arrangements breathe. You hear space around the instruments, small creaks and sighs that remind you this is a band that grew up in rooms, not just on laptops. Wagner sings with the same quiet authority that anchored Nixon and Is a Woman, but there is a warmth here that nods to their country soul beginnings. The electronics that coloured their last couple of records are still felt in the attention to texture, though they sit behind the performances rather than in front. It is a record about touch, about feel, about the decisions players make with their hands.

Covers records can be polite. Trip is generous. The selections roam, and Lambchop follow without strain. One moment hints at Southern gospel, another has the soft focus of 70s pop, then you find yourself in a corner of modern indie where patience is a virtue. Nothing feels like a genre exercise. The band find the through line in tone and tempo, in a gentle pulse that keeps the set coherent. It works as a single sit, which is how I suspect it was meant to be heard, the way you flip a side of Lambchop vinyl and sink back into the couch as the needle rides the groove.

Critics heard that quiet ambition too. The record drew warm notices from places like Pitchfork and Uncut, both of which have followed Wagner’s late career shift with interest. Fans took to it as well, often singling out Reservations as a standout, but also noting how the deeper cuts reward repeat listens. It fits neatly in the catalogue, bridging the experimentation of the last few years with the patient chamber feel that first drew many of us in. If you have been with the band since the mid 90s, Trip feels like a conversation between eras.

On wax, Trip comes into its own. The dynamics are subtle, and the room tone adds weight to the quietest passages. If you are crate digging and you spot Trip vinyl, give it a spin. It is the kind of album that sneaks up on you during a late Sunday. For collectors hunting Lambchop albums on vinyl, this one plays well next to Mr. M and Showtunes, a tidy triangle of the band’s softest voices. If you prefer to buy Lambchop records online, keep an eye on both Merge’s shop and your usual local haunts. Here in Australia, the slower burners often vanish first, and a quick search at a Melbourne record store or a trusted site that specialises in vinyl records Australia wide can save a lot of phoning around.

Trip is not a grand statement, and that is part of its charm. It feels like friends in Nashville sharing songs they love, listening closely, leaving room for each other, and trusting the take. In a year when travel was mostly memory, Lambchop found a way to make a journey anyway. For anyone who came to this band for the way they fold tenderness into craft, Trip is a quiet reward. And if you are new, this is a gentle way in, the start of a path that can lead you to a shelf full of Lambchop vinyl, each record a different shade of the same steady light.