Awcmon; Noyoucmon (2004)

Kurt Wagner and his motley Nashville crew Lambchop are at it again, fashioning a downtrodden and droopy-eyed batch of heartsick tales across two discs, Awcmon and Noyoucmon -- with sweet and swollen strings, no less. One CD offers 10-gallon Goth laments, the other a slightly more sprightly batch of beer chasers, all of it tinted a dark shade of mahogany by Wagner's chilling alto. Which begs the question: Is two better than one? Judicious distillation might have provided sharper focus, but this is an appealingly ambitious sprawl.

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