September 30 street date. Before he started work on what would become his 16th album, "The Bible", Lambchop's Kurt Wagner found himself at the proverbial crossroads. Nearing the end of Lambchop's third decade, Wagner felt musically isolated. Many of his old bandmates were either long gone or uninterested in touring anymore. He questioned whether making music even made sense. Wagner was actually considering getting a job at the grocery store down the road. "The Bible" is the sound of Wagner looking backwards and forwards, asking this and all the other big questions. He was up in the middle of the night during that first year of the plague, watching his new friend from Minneapolis, Andrew Broder, play a Wurlitzer on IG Live. He called Broder up. And then Wagner found himself in Minneapolis, in the sweltering summer of 2021, in a de-commissioned paint factory turned practice space. He had come up and entrusted himself this piano player, Broder, and Broder’s madman partner, Ryan Olson. This would be the first time Wagner let somebody else - people who weren’t even from Nashville - produce a Lambchop record. The music on "The Bible" is more unpredictable than it's ever been on a Lambchop record. Jazz careening into country, into disco, into funk, and back to country.
Merge Records was started in the summer of 1989, by Laura Ballance & Mac McCaughan, the same summer they formed the band Superchunk in Chapel Hill, NC. The first couple releases were cassettes (remember those?), by WWAX and Bricks, followed by the first Superchunk (then known only as "Chunk") 7" single. The vinyl 7" was the format of choice for the first 3 years of the label, with cash borrowed from friends to finance projects (including singles from Erectus Monotone, Angels of Epistemology, and more Superchunk) and bedrooms serving as Merge HQ until 1992, when the first Merge full-length release, Tossing Seeds by Superchunk, was released on CD, LP, and cassette. With this release Merge also forged a relationship with Touch and Go Records of Chicago, who have done an admirable job manufacturing and distributing the bulk of Merge's full-length releases since then. Since '92 Merge moved from one charming-yet-run-down office to another until 2001, when we finally made the move from Chapel Hill down the road to a fine old building all our own in historic Downtown Durham, NC. In 2004 Merge Records is celebrating its 15th birthday, and while our roster has changed, rotated, permutated and expanded over the last 15 years, the quality we look for in records as fans is still there in the music we put out on Merge. Thanks for listening!
September 30 street date. Before he started work on what would become his 16th album, "The Bible", Lambchop's Kurt Wagner found himself at the proverbial crossroads. Nearing the end of Lambchop's third decade, Wagner felt musically isolated. Many of his old bandmates were either long gone or uninterested in touring anymore. He questioned whether making music even made sense. Wagner was actually considering getting a job at the grocery store down the road. "The Bible" is the sound of Wagner looking backwards and forwards, asking this and all the other big questions. He was up in the middle of the night during that first year of the plague, watching his new friend from Minneapolis, Andrew Broder, play a Wurlitzer on IG Live. He called Broder up. And then Wagner found himself in Minneapolis, in the sweltering summer of 2021, in a de-commissioned paint factory turned practice space. He had come up and entrusted himself this piano player, Broder, and Broder’s madman partner, Ryan Olson. This would be the first time Wagner let somebody else - people who weren’t even from Nashville - produce a Lambchop record. The music on "The Bible" is more unpredictable than it's ever been on a Lambchop record. Jazz careening into country, into disco, into funk, and back to country.
Merge Records was started in the summer of 1989, by Laura Ballance & Mac McCaughan, the same summer they formed the band Superchunk in Chapel Hill, NC. The first couple releases were cassettes (remember those?), by WWAX and Bricks, followed by the first Superchunk (then known only as "Chunk") 7" single. The vinyl 7" was the format of choice for the first 3 years of the label, with cash borrowed from friends to finance projects (including singles from Erectus Monotone, Angels of Epistemology, and more Superchunk) and bedrooms serving as Merge HQ until 1992, when the first Merge full-length release, Tossing Seeds by Superchunk, was released on CD, LP, and cassette. With this release Merge also forged a relationship with Touch and Go Records of Chicago, who have done an admirable job manufacturing and distributing the bulk of Merge's full-length releases since then. Since '92 Merge moved from one charming-yet-run-down office to another until 2001, when we finally made the move from Chapel Hill down the road to a fine old building all our own in historic Downtown Durham, NC. In 2004 Merge Records is celebrating its 15th birthday, and while our roster has changed, rotated, permutated and expanded over the last 15 years, the quality we look for in records as fans is still there in the music we put out on Merge. Thanks for listening!
September 30 street date. Before he started work on what would become his 16th album, "The Bible", Lambchop's Kurt Wagner found himself at the proverbial crossroads. Nearing the end of Lambchop's third decade, Wagner felt musically isolated. Many of his old bandmates were either long gone or uninterested in touring anymore. He questioned whether making music even made sense. Wagner was actually considering getting a job at the grocery store down the road. "The Bible" is the sound of Wagner looking backwards and forwards, asking this and all the other big questions. He was up in the middle of the night during that first year of the plague, watching his new friend from Minneapolis, Andrew Broder, play a Wurlitzer on IG Live. He called Broder up. And then Wagner found himself in Minneapolis, in the sweltering summer of 2021, in a de-commissioned paint factory turned practice space. He had come up and entrusted himself this piano player, Broder, and Broder’s madman partner, Ryan Olson. This would be the first time Wagner let somebody else - people who weren’t even from Nashville - produce a Lambchop record. The music on "The Bible" is more unpredictable than it's ever been on a Lambchop record. Jazz careening into country, into disco, into funk, and back to country.
Merge Records was started in the summer of 1989, by Laura Ballance & Mac McCaughan, the same summer they formed the band Superchunk in Chapel Hill, NC. The first couple releases were cassettes (remember those?), by WWAX and Bricks, followed by the first Superchunk (then known only as "Chunk") 7" single. The vinyl 7" was the format of choice for the first 3 years of the label, with cash borrowed from friends to finance projects (including singles from Erectus Monotone, Angels of Epistemology, and more Superchunk) and bedrooms serving as Merge HQ until 1992, when the first Merge full-length release, Tossing Seeds by Superchunk, was released on CD, LP, and cassette. With this release Merge also forged a relationship with Touch and Go Records of Chicago, who have done an admirable job manufacturing and distributing the bulk of Merge's full-length releases since then. Since '92 Merge moved from one charming-yet-run-down office to another until 2001, when we finally made the move from Chapel Hill down the road to a fine old building all our own in historic Downtown Durham, NC. In 2004 Merge Records is celebrating its 15th birthday, and while our roster has changed, rotated, permutated and expanded over the last 15 years, the quality we look for in records as fans is still there in the music we put out on Merge. Thanks for listening!
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