Straight off the release of new album Punching the Clown, Lambchop have shared a deadpan comedy short, Joke Country, depicting a fictional radio interview. Steve Marsh plays the host interviewing Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner, portrayed by Henry Phillips, who led the cast of a 2009 film also called Punching the Clown. The 10-minute short, directed by the real Kurt Wagner, packs in a barrage of dry riffs, meta gags, and pinwheeling semi-sequiturs. Watch it below.
As Sam Sodomsky notes in Pitchfork’s review of the album, the movie Punching the Clown, which Lambchop have cited as an inspiration, “centers on the trials and tribulations of a comedian-musician making his way to Los Angeles”; in that case, “turns out [the title is] a euphemism for masturbating.”
Revisit Larry Fitzmaurice’s 5-10-15-20 interview with Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner.