Lambert - Actually Good

A Closer Listen

The first time I went to see Lambert play live, I got more than I bargained for. It was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen, and not just because of the music.

Nowadays, when I go to watch Lambert live, part of why I go is because I want to hear him talk.

Lambert is an absolute master of the shaggy dog story. He’s brilliant at them. He can ramble on for several minutes, deadpan and wry, via several apparently (and sometimes actually) irrelevant detours. Like all good shaggy dog stories, they could be true, but at times they are so absurd that you’re not sure whether you’ve been had. If they are true, they’re a beautiful testament to how wonderfully weird life can be… or maybe he’s just pulling your leg.

I mention this not just because I think you should go see him live—you definitely should, he’s touring this autumn—but because the story behind new album Actually Good is a prime example of said shaggy dog story.

According to the press release that announced the lead single, Actually Good is the soundtrack to a failed crime drama that was “too bad to finish”.

But the music was actually good! The failed crime drama was ’The Stranger’ and the single released today was supposed to be the opening theme. The series didn’t deserve this track, but you do! The video was created from salvaged footage from the series record, recovered through an arduous legal battle at the end of filming. Later this year, we will release a remarkable mini-documentary about the making of this crime catastrophe.

I have literally no idea how much of this is true. I suspect there’s probably at least a grain of truth in there: listening to the music on the album, it feels plausible, and certainly he’s successful enough to have been commissioned to write soundtracks.

But I can’t be sure, and certainly the video that accompanies “The Stranger” is a paradigmatic example of Lambert’s glorious utter bulls***. I love it.

Similarly, this video for the album title track, featuring what is surely one of the great chase scenes in cinema history:

The way he crossed the puddle actually made me spit out my coffee.

The playfulness seems to come from his jazz influences, which he explored recently. It’s not just in the videos; it shows up in the music too, especially when he’s playing live and improvising, where he seems liberated. At the risk of killing the joy by intellectualising it, there’s an obvious analogy between the shaggy dog story and the musical improvisation. But going deeper than that, his ability to combine beauty with playfulness—or “Drama and Comedy”, to quote one of the track titles—makes him stand out amongst his contemporary classical peers.

Lambert has always been a great musician capable of exquisitely beautiful moments, right from the first self-titled album, but as he’s grown in confidence, he’s become ever funnier. You get the sense that behind the mask, he feels free to become more and more himself. It’s almost as if he’s conquered the self-doubt that led him to first put on the mask and realised that he’s “actually good”. He really is. It’s a joy to watch. (Garreth Brooke)