• News

• All

May 18, 2021 By Mark Redfern Photography by Angelina Castillo

Lambchop (the project of Kurt Wagner) are releasing a new album, Showtunes, this Friday via Merge. Now they have shared the album’s third single, “The Last Benedict,” via a video for it. Wagner says the song was inspired by eggs and a James Dean movie. The video simply features a candle burning. Watch it below.

Wagner had this to say about the song in a press release: “At the breakfast buffet table in a hotel during the Pickathon Festival, I was ‘lucky’ enough to get the last eggs Benedict of the service. One sad egg. Later, I caught the final scene in Giant, the one after the brawl in the diner where a battered but bemused Rock Hudson looks across the table at his grandson and says something akin to ‘the last Benedict.’ Much later, I was sitting on my back porch and wrote this song.

Lambchop previously shared the album’s first single, “A Chef’s Kiss,” which was one of our Songs of the Week. Then they have shared the album’s second single, the seven-minute long “Fuku,” via a strange video/short film for it.

Showtunes was created remotely by Wagner with the help of several other musicians, including Ryan Olson of Gayngs and James McNew of Yo La Tengo.

Wagner said in a previous release press release: “In hindsight, it made perfect sense. The original idea behind Lambchop was: anyone could be part of Lambchop (so long as they behaved themselves). This revolving-door policy is how the band has grown and contracted through our many years.”

He added: “One of the things that holds Lambchop together, what binds us is that we are friends with similar likes and an appreciation and respect for what each other does. It’s what has kept this band evolving through time. With this approach, the group has just gotten larger with its members free to come and go, to be a part of the music as the songs and their interest might allow. Just like in the beginning.”

The band’s most recent album, TRIP, came out last year on Merge.

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.