Civilization Linux

On the two volumes of The Decline of Country and Western Civilization—one from German label City Slang and the other from the band’s American label, Merge—Lambchop gather a gaggle of rarities and oddities, tracks from label samplers and early attempts at songs that would later find homes on What Another Man Spills, Nixon, or Is a Woman. Technically, most are the A- and B-sides from six years of seven-inch singles, but they have the feel of songs stacked for years in the garage behind two decades of National Geographics or lost behind the bedroom bureau, gathering dust with someone’s wallet-size school portrait.