Lambchop, David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights at the Kings Arms

Reviewed by RUSSELL BAILLIE

The guy at the front's name is Wagner and what he does can resemble an orchestra.

It seemed preparations had been made. The new, bigger and higher Kings Arms stage was getting its first true test of structural soundness with a shiny baby grand piano plonked to one side.

But this being a long way from hometown Nashville, the line-up of Lambchop - the sometimes sprawling vehicle for the voice and songs of one Kurt Wagner which has stretched to a semi-orchestral nine-strong line-up - was a more conventional five.

Well, conventional to a point. Most of them were sitting down. Including Wagner at the front perched on a wooden bench which just added to the front-porch mood of Lambchop's set.

The pity was, this wasn't a front porch, but a sold-out pub of people, many of whom gave up on absorbing the quiet and artful nuances of Lambchop's sound and the wry notions of Wagner's lyrics and just talked, then talked a bit louder. (Prize for the best attention deficit goes to the nearby chap with the Scandanavian accent whose overheard conversation about Tom Waits drowned out an entire song, only for him to raise his pint glass and go wo-hoo at the end of the number.)

Maybe hushed reverence was too much to ask for. But Lambchop certainly aren't a bar band and they aren't - just as they keep saying - alt-country either. Even if Wagner does come from Nashville and dresses like he knows one end of a combine harvester from another.

But the languid delivery of songs mostly from their last two studio albums Is a Woman and Nixon was still quietly captivating when you could absorb the detail and all those plaintive chord changes.

Which also meant forgiving Wagner's particular vocal style, a sort of speak-sing not unlike a smooth-sanded version of the aforementioned Mr Waits, only one which over-reaches itself when it tries soul gymnastics it doesn't have the upper body strength for.

But still, even if Lambchop's approach requires an intimacy and a sit-down concentration, they still entertained (at least when the pianist played a sparkling rendition of the theme from The Deer Hunter as intro music), and briefly worked up a head of steam on songs such as Up With People.

A one-time member of Lambchops' live line-up on a past US tour, David Kilgour, sat in on guitar with Wagner and co, having already opened the show with his own band, The Heavy Eights, in a low-key, undistinguished set which at least got into the low-decibel spirit of the occasion.