The Walkmen – You & Me
This is an oddly difficult review to write, not because I don’t know what I want to say, but because it seems to be a slightly silly statement to make in the first place. Basically, for all there are a lot of songs I love on this record I find myself not quite clicking with the album for some reason. No idea why.
Maybe the pace is a little more homogeneous their inspired Bows + Arrows from a few years back, maybe the raw bite of that record has been slightly dulled by slicker production and slightly gentler arrangements Donde Esta la Playa is brilliant, On the Water and In the New Year are just superb and then, just as you think the album’s tailing off, New Country and I Lost You make an appearance.
Maybe this is just indicative of being in the process of learning to appreciate an album. When I first heard this I heard a couple of good songs and precious little else. As I’ve listened to it more and more, however, more and more of the songs have slowly made themselves known – Red Moon is bloody gorgeous by the way – so maybe in a couple of weeks I’ll suddenly realise that I love the album as a whole, but for now it seems oddly less than the sum of its parts.
Leithauser’s voice is strained, but a thing of beauty nonetheless, and the low-fi, de-tuned sound The Walkmen seem to favour is frankly fucking brilliant, as far as I’m concerned. There may not be a venomous equivalent to The Rat on this record, but it is packed full of excellent nonentheless.
The Walkmen – On the Water
The Walkmen – In the New Year
Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon (There appears to be some discrepancy between the US and the global release dates, which is fucking silly frankly because all that will do is drive people to torrent sites and cost sales. Clap clap clap.)
I’ve never been able to muster much enthusiasm for this lot. Even Bows + Arrows left me cold. I have the same problem with the National. Everyone got all excited about The Boxer last year and so I tentatively bought it , and just as I suspected it lived down to my expectations. I really didn’t get it at all. Perhaps it’s a matter of brain-wiring. These tunes sound OK, I guess, but they give me no tickle whatsoever in my nucleus accumbens, and without a tickle in the nucleus accumbens what the hell have you got?
Coke & whores?
Typical. It’s always about the amygdala with you, isn’t it? When in doubt … coke and whores.
Shove it up your nucleus accumbens.
Wise guy eh? Don’t make me come over there and put my boot up your fornicate gyrus.
It always surprises me how people are able to go so lukewarm on this band – even with A Hundred Miles Off, which a lot of reviews criticized, I think every record the Walkmen have made is absolutely beautiful. I’ve yet to find any wrong with them. On the other hand, I once read a review that compared Hamilton’s voice to a dying Katharine Hepburn, or something of the sort (can’t imagine where that came from), and though I want to defend him, I do giggle a bit when I hear Hepburn’s voice…
Also, Paul Maroon’s got the most magnificent guitar, so if anyone knows what he plays, do speak up!
A dying Katherine Hepburn? That’s too funny to take offence at. I agree with you, although they occasionally write songs I’m not so keen on (like most of A Hundred Miles Off) I love their sound.