Punching the Clown

After four albums of exploring the depths of electronic experimentation, Kurt Wagner has picked up the acoustic guitar again and is singing without autotune. But like every Lambchop album, it’s not that easy, or that pandering. Recorded partially in Justin Vernon’s April Base studio and partially in London, Punching The Clown is swaddled in two different vocal sextets that act as call-and-response greek chorals to Kurt’s singing and playing. And aside from some banjo from Vernon and maybe thirty seconds total of percussion, that’s all that’s on the album. And it is a glorious experience. The vocals swirl around, like ghosts rattling cupboard doors in a haunted house. Wagner’s vocals, dry and in that trademarked half-sob, spotlight mundanities surrounded by hurricanes of change. There is nothing passive or anything truly quiet about this record. It is hilarious and brutal music that will stop you in your tracks if you try to have it play in the background. To wit, I gave up doing the dishes entirely while listening to it once, leaning against the washing machine and crying while closer “No Chicago” hummed its near-hidden track coda in my ears. Then I pressed play on the album once more. It’s a sonic bed I will return to time and again. Modern masterpiece shit.