Nixon (2000)

Nixon is the fifth studio album by American rock band Lambchop. It was released on February 7, 2000, and was issued by Merge Records and City Slang.

Nixon became a breakthrough release for Lambchop in the United Kingdom, where it received critical acclaim and was named among the best albums of 2000 by numerous publications.

Composition

Nixon has been described as a merging of chamber pop, countrypolitan, and R&B sounds alongside "sweet" soul music.

Artwork and title

The title Nixon alludes to Richard Nixon and was derived from the album's cover artwork, which is a painting by Wayne White, a friend of Lambchop frontman Kurt Wagner. "He always plays around with slogans or words. He considered the material on the Nixon album to be tragicomic, and an image of Nixon came to mind," Wagner explained.

Release

Nixon was released on February 7, 2000, by Lambchop's European label City Slang, and on February 8, 2000, by the band's American label Merge Records. It peaked at number 60 on the UK Albums Chart. "Up with People" was released as a single from the album on May 2, 2000, reaching number 66 on the UK Singles Chart. According to The Guardian's John Aizlewood, Nixon established Lambchop as "standard bearers" for alternative country music, and "proved that the genre could be commercially viable if it painted its off-kilter pictures of redemption and loss in glorious Technicolor rather than mealy-mouthed monochrome."

Critical reception

Nixon was released to highly positive reviews from music critics, receiving a score of 84 out of 100 on the review aggregation website Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim". The album was particularly well received by the British music press. NME critic Gavin Martin deemed it Lambchop's best record and said that its "sheer sonorous delight" justified comparisons to The Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds, while Allan Jones of Uncut praised Nixon as "one of the first great records of the new millennium". At the end of 2000, Nixon was named one of the year's best albums by numerous British publications, including Uncut (who ranked it as the best album of 2000), Mojo, NME, and Q.

Nixon was later included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Personnel

Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.