Walkmen, The - You & Me (Album)
» The Walkmen - Corner Hotel, The, Vic - February 23, 2007
The Walkmen are leftovers from nineties band Jonathan Fire Eater. Early this millennium keyboardist Walter Martin, drummer Matt Barrick and guitarist Paul Maroon joined forces with Hamilton Leithauser on vocals to form The Walkmen. It has been a while since we heard anything good from them. The band got themselves a name through the international indie scene the same way as soft pop-rockers Death Cab for Cutie, through TV series The O.C. Their album Bows and Arrows peaked in the top ten on both top Indie and top Heatseekers on the US Billboard Lists.
Their Christmas album had somewhat more mediocre results, but overall, The Walkmen are now well acknowledged in the international Indie Scene. You & Me is a pompous album. It has all those 'larger than life' ingredients that makes it an almost too great of a record. It has a track that's only three chords before it skips on to the next track. In my eyes, you're pretty pretentious if you think you're able to pull it off.
Do not misunderstand me. They do pull it off. And they do it very well indeed. The vocals of Hamilton Leithauser have been compared to both Bob Dylan and Steve Marriot. And the title, You & Me signifies the exact feel you get from listening to the album. That it is about the guy who sings all those heavy heartbreaking lyrics and someone special in his life.
New to this album is a slow motion almost blues-sound. On tracks like Donde Esta La Playa, the guitar and drums sends the listener back to late sixties, early seventies blues music. The track Flamingos for Colbert is almost more of just a tune, a guitar, denoting that someone is flying away with its light and lifting sound. While Canadian Girl has the same blues like sound as the opening track, On the Water and In The New Year sounds like more pretentious versions of Little House of Savages. Cream of the crop tracks are I Lost You, In The New Year and On The Water simply because they prove that a band only needs to reinvent themselves a little from album to album, not necessarily a whole lot.
I like this album. For me it goes in line with some of the stuff the music critics will name as The Great Ones, like Leonard Cohen. It is music I can put on my stereo, continued by pouring myself a glass of wine and then curl up with a good book. It's mood music, if I had to categorize it. And it is absolutely loveable.
