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Lullaby For the Working Class
Song
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Lullaby For the Working Class
Song
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In a time when most pop music is, metaphorically speaking, delivered with the speed and depth of e-mail, then Song, the third album from Lullaby For The Working Class, is like a letter that took a long slow journey from America’s heartland to your door. And it’s stuffed with stories, pictures, poems, reveries and memories, along with the dust, scent and sounds of the rooms in which it was crafted. Lullaby's music is always evolving and on Song they have found their own signature sound. They have broadened their scope from their raw acoustic beginnings to create a more texturally dynamic work that both whispers and roars.
Critics in the U.S. and the U.K. were smitten by their sound and strained to describe exactly what it was. The NME suggested that Ted, with his hard-to-reach high notes, sounded “uncannily like Mick Jagger at his most distraught and debauched.” Request decided they were “a middle-American version of Tindersticks.” Option opted simply to call them “spine-tinglingly gorgeous.” Raygun, declaring their debut “both spontaneous and elegant,” offered perhaps the definitive word on Blanket Warm: “It rocks sedately. It rocks with passion. It rocks back and forth like a dangerous drunk who’s too far gone to do any real damage...” After touring the U.S. and Europe, where they were met with much critical acclaim, they released their second album, I Never Even Asked For Light, in January, 1998, and it was as spontaneous, elegant, sedate, and passionate as their debut. It was also more complex and ambitious. Jon Pareles of the New York Times recognized Lullaby’s growth: “Played on acoustic instruments, the music seems folksy, but it’s a long way from rustic simplicity.” As a live ensemble, the group could be playful and funny -- a Rolling Stone critic remarked that they had “the alchemy of an acoustic and possibly sober Guided By Voices” -- but their ingratiating collegiate manner belied their accelerating sophistication. In clubs where you typically came to rock out, you couldn’t help but be riveted by their wistful and dreamy, meticulously rendered performances. This was alt- chamber music, unfettered by category, protocol, or the confines of cool. In the past, Lullaby has not only been
inspired by its travels, but has quite literally incorporated them into its work. For the final
track of ...Light , the band members had sampled the sounds of themselves
standing in the pacific ocean during their first trip out west. Now, as if a
journey were simply being resumed, Song opens with the sampled sound of the
Lullaby van on the road, and it also serves as a haunting coda at album’s
end. It’s no typical, scene-setting sound effect, though, but a hypnotic drone out
of which emerge melodies that reach earshot slowly, the way roadside
landmarks gradually come into view while you’re driving. The album was produced
back home in a rather atypical fashion: the songs of Song were recorded
in sequence, so it became more of a seamless performance than just a
collection of tunes. Lullaby employed a live You may find your own comparisons, if you want to try and pin this thing down and give it a name. Better just to climb in the van with the guys, listen to the drone, and be transported.
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Albums
1997 Never Even Asked For Light (Bar/None)
Singles
Press: Call Susan and Leah @ Otherworldly Promotions 512-476-0990
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Lullaby For The Working Class live in
Lincoln, Nebraska and record in
their own studio, Whoopass, which has become a creative hub for likeminded
local musicians and artists from the Lullaby-run label, 
string quartet and horn section
for these sessions and they weren’t afraid to jumble genres in a single piece,
juxtaposing classical strings, for example, with country-style pedal
steel and dobro. Their current musical influences are typically diverse and
sometimes surprising: Sonic Youth, minimalist composers Tony Conrad and Arnold Dreyblatt, Led Zeppelin (who
definitely knew how to employ
amazing string arrangements), folk guitarists Leo Kottke and John Fahey, even
Metallica.
