Lambchop: Tools In The Dryer

With Tools In The Dryer, the Nashville pop orchestra Lambchop joins the legion of acts who've thrown a lasso around their previously uncollected recordings. In Lambchop's case, the job must have taken an eagle eye. Bandleader Kurt Wagner and his loose collective have been around for more than a decade, and have participated fully in the '90s alternative-music game of self-releasing cassettes, loaning out songs to compilations, and scattering 45s on tiny labels worldwide. In its nascent stages, Lambchop also wavered over how to back Wagner's wry working-class musings: with a full-throttle wall of noise or with the muted, lullaby-like landscape of sound that has become the band's trademark. As a result, alternate, rollicking versions of many early Lambchop songs are stacked up in the vaults. Tools In The Dryer is far from comprehensive, which is sure to aggravate fans waiting for certain lost classics to make it onto CD. The haunting, heartfelt early singles "My Cliché" / "Loretta Lung" and "I Can Hardly Spell My Name" / "The Scary Caroler" are missing, as are the catchy B-sides to the charming (and included) singles "Whitey" and "Cigaretiquette" and the fast versions of How I Quit Smoking standards "Smuckers" and "Garf." Since its inception, Lambchop has tended toward the mellow, the band having mostly abandoned its earliest punk energy. It would've been nice to have more of the raw stuff preserved on this project, which has only the cacophonous "Nine" and "Style Monkeys" to represent the group's rock-out side. Absences aside, though, Tools In The Dryer accomplishes the goal stated in the liner notes: showing that Lambchop has dabbled in styles other than the liquidy country-soul that made the band a beloved cult act. The set's prizes are three remixes—an avant-garde re-imagining of "The Militant," a sweetly stirring "Up With People," and a disco-furious "Give Me Your Love"—which demonstrate the surprising mutability of Wagner's songwriting and Lambchop's performances. It turns out that what often seemed overly relaxed is instead as innate as it is insinuating.