It took a couple (OK, ten) of spins, but Lambchop’s heartrending Mr. M album has vaulted to the top of our Best Albums of 2012 So Far list.  Bandleader Kurt Wagner has fashioned a subtle but brilliant album that evinces seemingly effortless complexity and poesy.  Musically, Wagner has eschewed the wall of sound that he’s favored at times in Lambchop’s past and has instead stripped Mr. M’s songs of excess.  And in the process, the heart and soul has been revealed.  The net effect smacks at times of  Wagner-as-’50s or ’60s-crooner (for a similar effect check out the great albums of Richard Hawley).  But in the end it’s just Wagner doing what he does best:  writing intelligent, emotionally powerful songs.

Check out the video for 2B2 (with its con-texty lyrics) below, just one of the relentlessly superb songs from off of Mr. M (our personal faves are Kind Of, Nice Without Mercy and Mr. Met).  Wagner has said this about the song’s lines “One man cooks with powder / The other cooks with stones”:  “We [Wagner and founding bandmate Jonathan Marx] were talking on the phone and we discovered we were both cooking chickpeas. The lyrics are a basic chronicle of events surrounding a specific evening when I came to an understanding. Some might call this a revelation, I just call it a relief.”

Listen in and be relieved to know that songs as good as this are still being rendered.