Lambchop - Is A Woman

To those who embraced it's predecessor, 2000's Nixon-whose luscious country soul grooves provided the sprawling Nashville collective with a significant breakthrough-the deceptively gentle Is a Woman administered a quiet but compelling shock. The album's remarkable "My Blue Wave," where Kurt Wagner depicts a world of helpless tragedy in which comfort can nonetheless be found in the smallest of gestures, exemplifies the true spirit of this record. Fifteen years later, Lambchop continue to confound and astound in equal measure. With their sound consistently shifting and surprising, the band's line-up has morphed and adapted repeatedly since then, but the extraordinary, idiosyncratic Is a Woman is now considered to be one of the band's finest. As Wagner himself asks on "Bugs": "Think of things and how they got this way/ Way above the rest/ Isn't this the fucking best?"