Lambchop’s Punching The Clown Moves Toward Acoustic Sparsity

Kurt Wagner has never let Lambchop settle. Across four decades, the project has shifted from left-field country to Chicago soul to electronic experiments. Punching The Clown, the first Lambchop album in four years, marks another turn: away from circuitry and toward bare acoustic arrangements built around voice.

The shift is audible from the opening track, “Just West of Nicollet.” Acoustic guitar and banjo carry most of the record, leaving room for Wagner’s low, unhurried voice and layers of harmony that occasionally nod toward Beach Boys-style vocal arrangements. On “Andrew Jackson Asshat,” those voices expand into full choral passages, one of the album’s clearest departures from recent work.

Wagner’s history explains some of this range. He started the project in 1986 under the name Posterchild and has since