New Song Of The Day: Lambchop – Fuku

And now for something completely different…check out this new song and film from Lambchop. The song is Fuku and the film was made by Doug Anderson.

The song is Fuku and the film was made by Doug Anderson. There is a new Lambchop album, Showtunes!, due out May 21st. Here’s the record company blurb with more:

Feast your eyes and ears on the exciting second preview from Lambchop’s upcoming new album Showtunes! Co-written by Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner and Cologne DJ Twit One, “Fuku” is a highly imaginative and immersive experience that blends sounds both natural and synthetic. Its short film was conceived and directed by Doug Anderson and involves three characters who awaken from a torpor induced by a successful ritual, a powerful drug, or an unending rehearsal.

Anderson had this to say about the song and his film:

I heard Kurt’s song and was absolutely in love. “Fuku” evokes all of the things that the musical theater reaches for but is incapable of representing: the desire, longing, and impossibility of really falling in love. It reminded me of the truth in Walter Pater’s “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.” Pure and abstract.

The characters in the video try and fail to communicate their experience—they possess nothing and are incapable of giving that nothing to another. Attempting to evoke coherence from the inconsistent, disparate, and stupid. They persist.

Wagner adds: “There is a theatricality to the song ‘Fuku’ which is a thread that runs through the Showtunes idea. Doug Anderson responded to that like a cat to catnip. On first viewing, the visual might appear a bit unusual, foreign even, but trust me, it could have been a lot weirder.”

In late 2019, as he has done so many times throughout his varied and fascinating career, Kurt Wagner was experimenting with something new, something that would eventually reveal itself as Lambchop’s Showtunes. By taking simple guitar tracks and converting them into MIDI piano tracks, “Suddenly I discovered I could ‘play’ the piano,” he says. “It was a revelation that from those conversions, I was able to manipulate each note and add, subtract, arrange the chords and melody into a form that didn’t have any of the limitations I had with my previous methods of writing with a guitar.”

Removing these limitations led to a surprising new sound, something akin to show tunes but with edges burnished and viewed through Kurt’s own specific lens. “In general, it’s a genre I was none too fond of,” he admits, “with the exceptions of a few Great American Songbook–type of stuff or some of the works of artists like Tom Waits or early Randy Newman or even Gershwin or Carmichael. I’d always wanted to make songs with a similar feel, but my skills were limited until now.”

Showtunes arrives May 21 in North America on Merge. Pre-order today on CD, LP, and translucent orange Peak Vinyl in the Merge store and participating record shops. Also available in the Merge store: the official Lambchop Showtunes dog calendar which spans June 2021–June 2022 and features album cover model Rookie and 12 other pups from the extended Lambchop family