LAMBCHOP

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To hear Kurt Wagner tell it, Punching the Clown — the seventeenth album by beloved shapeshifting Nashville institution Lambchop, out August 21, 2026 on Merge Records and City Slang — began as a ghost hunt. After hearing a song on the radio while driving one night — “a minimal single chord strummed banjo and a small group of voices” — he went looking for it and failed. In his pursuit, he discovered “lined-out singing,” a form of acapella call-and-response gospel singing that began in Scotland in the 1800s and became a root of American gospel and country music when Scottish immigrants settled in Appalachia. The song, typically a hymn, is led by a clerk, who begins the verse alone before a choir swells up to accompany them on the rest of the line.

Lined-out singing was born out of necessity — not every member of a given congregation could read, so the clerk’s voice spurred the choir’s memory of what came next in the hymn — but its effect is profound: a haunting, elegiac means of interpretation in which you can hear not only the words and what they mean, but what those words meant to each person singing them.

From ⏁:

a spontaneous call and response type of acapella singing led by a clerk with a chorus of singers
revealing the raw beauty and power of the human voice with its unique varieties
its unadorned simplicity gave weight to the words as they were sung.
i wanted to make a record that emulated this kind of music.

In ⏃, Wagner says that doing so required him to become a better songwriter. The process was a crucible. Working again with guitarist Andrew Broder, Wagner went back to writing songs the way he did when he started out, with guitar and voice, studying songs and songwriters, “allowing their madness, pain, and truth to become mine.” Of the dozens of songs Wagner and Broder wrote, 30 were considered, and 12 became Punching the Clown. The voice lining out those songs, unmistakably, is Wagner’s. Responding to his call: Broder (guitar), Justin Vernon (banjo), an Eau Claire-based choir put together by Blake Morgan, The Bible producer Ryan Olson (Poliça, Gayngs), and engineer Mark Nevers (Silver Jews, Bill Callahan, Bonnie “Prince” Billy), recording and mixing his first Lambchop album since 2012’s Mr. M.

However the notion of Wagner needing to become a “better” songwriter strikes longtime Lambchop fans, his striving has yielded an album of disarming humanity. It’s graceful, generous, sometimes wry and sometimes heartbreaking, unblinkingly idiosyncratic yet precise as cut glass.  How else can one describe Punching the Clown, beyond Wagner’s own exegesis? It’s the darndest thing.

⏁

in early 2024 i heard a song on the radio on my way to get some gas.
just a minimal single chord strummed banjo and a small group of voices.
it seemed perfect in the moment as the moment became perfect in itself.
i never found out who it was, sounded kinda like early country gospel?
in a time of searching i discovered a type of gospel singing known as lined-out singing
which is said to have begun in the late 1800s in scotland.
it migrated to appalachia and became an obscure root of american gospel, country.…
a spontaneous call and response type of acapella singing led by a clerk with a chorus of singers
revealing the raw beauty and power of the human voice with its unique varieties
its unadorned simplicity gave weight to the words as they were sung.
i wanted to make a record that emulated this kind of music.

⏄
is this that? perhaps
ryan and i decided to make another record together after the bible.
my idea was to go back to writing songs in the manner in which i began
then present them as described in ⏁ solely banjo, voice, and choir

ryan mentioned that justin had been playing the banjo
i’d done some prior work with blake for a live london performance with a choir
and there it was
recorded in 3 days, a year thereafter at april base
andrew justin ryan nevers blake with his selected six-part choir
trusting in our mutual love and respect for each others proclivities
later adding 12 more singers in london and randal in minneapolis
we figured it out.

⏃
the songs took some doing
i needed to become a better writer
so i asked andrew to write some hits
he’d rarely written songs in this way of simple song demos of guitar and voice
i took to the study of the works of the many great songwriters, their work, lives, process.
in doing so allowing their madness, pain, and truth to become mine
i failed so often until i didn’t
it got better
in the end there were 30 songs that transcended into consideration
ryan and i picked 12 and decided the track listing
which we adhered to throughout the entire process

⏇
i’m conflicted not offering a more detailed accounting for these songs but this feels like enough
let’s just say i tried for simple, restrained vocabulary to get closer to a modest amount of truth
through a guise of hyper-naturalism grief love and humor

Photo Credit: Ingo Pertramer