For its 15th anniversary, Lambchop’s 2002 album Is a Woman was made available on vinyl in North America for the first time on March 3, 2017. The 2-LP set in a gatefold sleeve allows Lambchop fans to fully appreciate the lovely album art. As a bonus, the vinyl reissue includes eight digital bonus tracks recorded during the Is a Woman sessions.

To those who embraced its predecessor, 2000’s Nixon—whose luscious country soul grooves provided the sprawling Nashville collective with a significant breakthrough—the deceptively gentle Is a Woman administered a quiet but compelling shock. The album’s remarkable “My Blue Wave,” where Kurt Wagner depicts a world of helpless tragedy in which comfort can nonetheless be found in the smallest of gestures, exemplifies the true spirit of this record.

Lambchop continue to confound and astound in equal measure. With their sound consistently shifting and surprising, the band’s line-up has morphed and adapted repeatedly since then, but the extraordinary, idiosyncratic Is a Woman is considered to be one of the band’s finest. As Wagner himself asks on “Bugs”: “Think of things and how they got this way/ Way above the rest/ Isn’t this the fucking best?”

Is a Woman bonus digital tracks:

1.  The Gettysburg Address
2.  Backstreet Girl
3.  The Fadeaway Jumper
4.  Flub
5.  The Gusher
6.  The Puppy and the Leaf
7.  This Corrosion
8.  Uti