Some Songs Considered

“Give It” – X-Press 2 with Kurt Wagner
(Words/music: Darren Morris, Kurt Wagner, X-Press 2, available on Makeshift Feelgood, Sony 2006)

Eventually, “Give It” blooms into a lively, pulsing dance with synthesized horns and a choir of backing vocals.  At this point in the song, it becomes a digital gospel choir joining Kurt Wagner’s promise to be patient.  However, the track must grow into this the same way that Wagner’s narrator must learn to be patient.  At the beginning of the song, his narrator contemplates the future, eagerly seeking it out yet fearing the impending change.  He realizes that the moment he’s experiencing will pass and has the instinctive impulse to capture this specific moment.  It’s not quite that simple, as Wagner goes off in a couple tangents, but ultimately this crisis of “now versus then” comes to the forefront.  Alternately put, it’s the decision to focus on enjoying a given moment or think about how the moment fits into the larger picture.  In that sense, it’s a self-awareness of immediately recognizing a given moment as important and knowing that this recognition will change the moment in progress. 

I’ve discussed and thought about this idea a good amount recently in a few different contexts, eventually leading back to the same conclusion and the same example.  I’m way too inside my own head sometimes, and for all the positives that constant self-reflection brings, it makes it very hard to experience something and then “sort it out” later.  I then think about the first time I heard this song – earlier this summer at the end of Lambchop’s set at the Merge Records anniversary shows.  By this point in the set, Wagner and his dozen backing musicians won over the entire room, and Wagner’s impassioned “Give It / Once in a Lifetime” closing went to the next level.  It was a rare moment where I knew what was unfolding – the event’s signature performance – yet I found myself able to silence that part of my brain and be stunned into silence.  Soon afterward, I described it as “a surreal moment that ended a memorable set,” and a few months later I’m still thinking about it.  Ironically, by not immediately processing this moment, I’ve been able to process it a dozen different ways.  I’m still not sure I have a definitive answer, but I’m not sure that’s the point; Wagner’s protagonist turns off his meta-commentary and turns patience into a spiritual revival, and in a way I have too – albeit a series of minor personal revelations.  By quieting my thoughts for a few minutes, I sewed seeds for an entire series of ponderings.  In many ways, I’ll be chasing down that performance (or similar ones) for the rest of my life, and I’m only starting to realize that sometimes it’s worth letting it get a head start so that I can see where it leads me.

More on X-Press 2: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Your Fucking Sunny Day” – Lambchop
(Words/music: Kurt Wagner, available on Thriller, Merge Records 1997)

This is the last in my series of posts about bands on Merge Records (thank you for indulging me) and I planned on yesterday’s being the final one, but I need to write about the single best moment of my week in Chapel Hill.  I anticipated that Superchunk would be awesome and they didn’t disappoint.  However, I was not expecting the best set of the week to come from Lambchop, the musical project of former floorer Kurt Wagner.  Until I started receiving the SCORE boxset earlier this year, I couldn’t name a single Lambchop song.  I soon fell for “Your Fucking Sunny Day” on Phil Morrison’s mix, at first because of the title and then because of its strangely addictive melody.  It’s a difficult song to pin down – it’s kind of funky, kind of orchestrated.  The most compelling part of the song, for me, is the way Kurt Wagner sings it – holding out certain phrases, letting some notes sneak out as a yelp, and still staying faithful to the melody the entire time.  In three and a half minutes, Wagner gave a sense that his personality ran deeper than the cursing in his song titles and the humor mentioned in every synopsis I read after listening to this song.

None of this, however, prepared me for what I saw last Friday night at Merge’s anniversary show.  Wagner came on stage backed by ten musicians (which I’m told is half as many as accompanied him at the Merge 15th anniversary) and played a 40 minute set that left half of the crowd a dancing mess and the other half petrified in awe.  I expected Wagner’s songs to shuffle from genre to genre, but I didn’t expect every different style to have such life and enthusiasm.  The slow songs sounded gorgeous (and, when I could make out the words, melancholy and heartbreaking), and the lively songs swung like a jazz trio after weeks of rehearsals.  Over a forty five minute set, Wagner and his band made us laugh, tugged at our heartstrings, and made jaws hit the floor.  Appropriately, Lambchop garnered the loudest, most enthusiastic ovation to end their set of the week, with Wagner beaming beneath his thick frames and trucker hat.  I’m convinced that the people in the audience had no clue what was coming when Lambchop was introduced.  By the end of the set, Wagner leaped out of his seat when shouting out the lyrics to the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime,” seeming like a man speaking in tongues (and, appropriately, one-upping David Byrne’s evangelical preacher performance in the music video).  It was a surreal moment that ended a memorable set – one that melted even the most cynical of hearts.  I’ve been surprised by shows before and naively thought that it couldn’t happen again – not with the free flow of information and the ease of acquiring music on the internet.  I was wrong, and went home ready to explore Wagner’s catalog.  I’m excited to digest his albums and, perhaps, be surprised again.  Still, I’m not sure any record can duplicate what I experienced in person last Friday.

More on Lambchop: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm