Lambchop - Punching the Clown (Indie Exclusive Frosted Clear Vinyl)

Indie Exclusive Frosted Clear Vinyl

Merge Records issues Punching the Clown in the United States as MRG897, on standard black vinyl and on this indies-exclusive frosted clear pressing. City Slang handles the album everywhere else.

It is Lambchop's seventeenth album, and it started with a search that failed. Kurt Wagner heard a song on the radio while driving one night - by his account "a minimal single chord strummed banjo and a small group of voices" - and never found it again. What he found instead was lined-out singing, a call-and-response hymn form that came out of Scotland in the 1800s and took root in Appalachia when Scottish immigrants settled there. A clerk sings a line alone; the congregation answers it. The practice began as a way for congregations who could not read to follow a hymn.

Writing toward that sound sent Wagner back to guitar and voice with the guitarist Andrew Broder. Of the dozens of songs the two produced, thirty were considered and twelve made the record.

The album was cut over three days at April Base in Fall Creek, Wisconsin, in August 2025, with choir sessions following at the VOCES8 Centre in London in November and at Beech House Recording in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, in December. Ryan Olson produced. Justin Vernon plays banjo, Broder plays guitar, a six-part vocal ensemble assembled by Blake Morgan answers Wagner's lines, and a twelve-part London choir appears alongside them. Mark Nevers mixed the record, his first Lambchop album since Mr. M in 2012.

The album holds a Metacritic score of 86, which that site classes as universal acclaim, with 8.5 from Pitchfork, 9 out of 10 from PopMatters and five-star reviews in The Guardian, Mojo and Under the Radar.

Tracklist

1. Just West of Nicollet
2. A Doctor in the House
3. Weakened
4. Stella
5. Punching the Clown
6. White People
7. The New World Wave
8. Andrew Jackson Asshat
9. Afterburner
10. Cigar
11. To Do
12. No Chicago