Nixon

Nixon was produced by Mark Nevers and Kurt Wagner at Sound Emporium, Beech House and Studio 19 in Nashville, with dates not stated. The title alludes to Richard Nixon and comes from the cover painting by Wayne White, a friend of Wagner, who called the material tragicomic and said an image of Nixon came to mind; he told Exclaim! in 2016 that in a way you had to be there, in Nashville in the late 60s and early 70s, and joked that Nixon made the world so horrible for a while that it forced people to create some incredible music. The players include Paul Niehaus on pedal steel, John Delworth on Hammond B-3 and Rhodes, Deanna Varagona on baritone sax, Matt Swanson and Marc Trovillion on bass, the Nashville String Machine, and Wagner on a 1946 Gibson L-7. Two songs are not his alone: "The Book I Haven't Read" with Curtis Mayfield and the traditional "The Butcher Boy".

It reached number 60 on the UK albums chart and number 7 on the UK independent chart, with a Metacritic score of 84. Uncut gave it five stars and ranked it first of 2000, with Allan Jones calling it one of the first great records of the new millennium; Mojo gave five, NME 9 out of 10 and Spin 9 out of 10, and Pitchfork gave 6.5 in 2000 and 8.3 in 2014. Trouser Press called it Lambchop's masterpiece, and the A.V. Club's Joshua Klein a drowsy near-masterpiece. The Guardian's John Aizlewood said it established them as standard bearers for alternative country.