Lambchop have announced a new covers album called TRIP. The 6-track LP comes out November 13 via Merge in North America and City Slang worldwide. The group have also unveiled a 13-minute cover of Wilco’s ‘Reservations’. Listen to it below, and scroll down for the album’s cover artwork and tracklist.
According to a press release, each member of the band chose one song to cover for the record. “My idea was to see what might happen if I removed myself from the process as much as possible,” Kurt Wagner said in a statement. “In doing so, what surfaced would be elements that have always been there but maybe got overshadowed by my songwriting and approach.”
‘Reservations’, the closer from Wilco’s classic Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was drummer Matthew McCaughan’s pick. “I’d like to say that Wilco’s “Reservations” is a song I’ve always wanted to cover,” he said. “But honestly, after a friend had mentioned it in a story, I had to go back and give it another listen. Picking out a cover is stressful for me. It’s kind of a dumb thing to stress about, but so many songs have memories tied to them, and I don’t want to cloud those memories. I usually pick one of those songs that I feel would fit the band, but then I go back and forth, wondering the best way to approach the arrangement. Should we honor the original and try to faithfully re-create all the sounds and performances that make the song special to me, or should we take it apart and start over?”
He continued: “Then, add in the fact that the cover would be recorded and preserved forever. I could not think of one song that I couldn’t make an argument for both approaches, so it always ends in a one-person stalemate. So I decided I would pick a song that, while I love it, and know it, it wasn’t one that had been on repeat for months at some point in my life, nor was it one that is permanently tied to some memory of my own. Instead, I used my family’s and friends’ collections and recollections with and without their permission. That way I’d just ruin it for them. But it’s the thought that counts.”
Lambchop put out their most recent album This (Is what I wanted to tell you) last spring, followed by the Basement Tapes EP in October.
TRIP Cover Artwork:
TRIP Tracklist:
1. Reservations (Wilco cover)
2. Where the Grass Won’t Grow (Earl “Peanutt” Montgomery cover)
3. Shirley (Mirrors cover)
4. Golden Lady (Stevie Wonder cover)
5. Love Is Here and Now You’re Gone (Holland–Dozier–Holland cover)
6. Weather Blues (James McNew cover)
