The Walkmen
Lisbon
Fat Possum, September 14, 2010
There’s a lot I could say about the Walkmen, a band I liked for their first album, then fell for hard for their second, then fell away from for their third onward. I could say that singer Hamilton Leithauser’s tendon-straining shouting and arrhythmic delivery totally undo the music-for-grown-ups restraint and professionalism the band’s spent the last few years dealing in, which in turn strikes me as too polite for the “stranded and starry-eyed” stumblebum charm it’s clearly aiming for. I could say that the way Leithauser’s vocals are recorded, as though they’ve been thrown atop the music like a towel hanging out of a hamper, also emphasizes the lack of memorable hooks and melodies the band’s come up with in recent years. I could say that the frequently tinny mix really doesn’t mesh with the drunken physicality you ought to get out of a band doing the rueful bards of the bar scene thing. I could admit that for all this I’m still intrigued by aspects of their work–the ongoing fixation with Christmas/New Year’s/winter, for example, or their “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” approach to incorporating a horn section. But I really just want to ask: Once you’ve discovered that you can sound like a barfight…
…why settle for sounding like shuffling home after last call, over and over and over? Yes, that’s a special feeling, worth capturing, but if it’s always last call, it’s never really last call at all, right?