| Eight albums in, and Kurt Wagner, the sleepy-sounding Nashville resident behind venerable country outlaws Lambchop, has still never once raised his voice. Damaged, however, confirms that for all this band's languid, porchside-at-twilight manner, their idiosyncratic outsider spirit remains: 'I have always thought that handguns were made for shooting people,' croons Wagner, on the opening "Paperback Bible", 'Rather than for sport...' Does a long-term Lambchop fan need this album? Well, few could deny this is ground already well trod by Wagner and co, the lush string symphonies harking back to 2004's double album Aw C'Mon/No, You C'Mon. If Damaged has a theme, however, it's that of human frailty, and how humans overcome such frailty. The quietly devastating "Prepared [2]" is one highlight, a song that sees Wagner relating the tale of a collapsing love affair in a manner that sums up all the fraught impotence of heartbreak, without ever needing to paint its melancholy in obvious, broad strokes. The album ends, however, with a lump-in-throat moment of redemption, the closing "The Decline Of Country And Western Civilisation" borne up on majestic swells of strings, piano and crashing cymbal. Kurt Wagner is doing just fine. --Louis Pattison |
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