The Walkmen - You And Me

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Customer reviews
Press release

5...according to our Brian on Thu 25 Sep, 2008.

Just got the new Walkmen album in and being that they've delighted me in the past, I've opted to review the big posh digipak laden bugger. 'You & Me' from the off could be no-one else. They've got that shimmering, ghostly guitar sound, the tidy, dramatic drum, plinky doe-eyed piano flourishes & Hamilton Leithauser's longing, tortured wail to elevate them into the realms of the highly distinguished. It's a stately album that hardly veers from the swinging, booze sodden template of albums past, a slightly shambling hollowed sound imbued with classicism. The boys here are all obsessed with the singer's Rod Stewart-isms but I can hear way beyond those limitations. A maudilin, pissed up/off Rod Stewart possibly? This record has all the majesty you'd expect from this New York quintet and on first listen is well worth a punt even if you're not already a convert. Nice to see Fierce Panda have offered them a home. Obviously a major label didn't know how to market these fellas and they've stuck firmly to their hugely original, clattering & slightly bombastic vision of heartbreaking alternative rock with a haunted ballroom twist. Superb!

1. Dónde está la Playa
2. Flamingos (for Colbert)
3. On the Water
4. In the New Year
5. Seven Years of Holidays (for Stretch)
6. Postcards from Tiny Islands
7. Red Moon
8. Canadian Girl
9. Four Provinces
10. Long Time Ahead of Us
11. The Blue Route
12. New Country
13. I Lost You
14. If Only It Were True

The Truth: THE WALKMEN are from New York City. They consist of Hamilton Leithauser (vocals/guitar), Paul Maroon (guitar/piano), Walter Martin (organ/bass), Matt Barrick (drums) and Peter Bauer (bass/organ). 'You & Me' is their fourth album and their first on fierce panda, although hardcore panda enthusiasts may well recall that a Walkmen track, 'My Old Man', appeared on the 'Shock & Oar' EP in 2004.

** THE WALKMEN are of course men of stealth and craft, dressed in black and, one wagers, distressed at the lack of loving care and attention applied to modern music. Eight years since the mighty 'We've Been Had' signaled the demise of Jonathan Fire*Eater and heralded the start of something even weirder, 'You & Me' finds the enigmatic quintet in predictably moody form with fourteen tracks of fearsome ingenuity featuring their trademark clanging guitar, their spooked keyboards making like a gothic ice cream van on Mars, their drums rolling like a schooner in a force ten gale.

** Alternative wild cards THE WALKMEN may be but you can't fault their consistency: 2002 saw the release of 'Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone', 2004 was the year of 'The Rat' and its parent album 'Bows & Arrows', 2006 witnessed 'A Hundred Miles Off' and precisely two more years later comes 'You & Me'. So underestimate THE WALKMEN at your peril. Likewise, if the music has a chaotic, drunken ebb and flow which hints at some spontaneous outpouring of musical grief then the reality is anything but, as 'You & Me' was painstakingly pieced together over two years in two cites - NYC and Philadelphia - and part of that meticulous construction was to make the album sound like a rock'n'roll record with depth and warmth and - uniquely for this notoriously challenging outfit - an uplifting mood to accompany the downtrodden chords. This then is a pukka grown-up album by a proper music lover's band.

** Drowned In Sound has already acclaimed 'You & Me', saying "This might be the best thing they've ever done", and we aren't about to disagree. European live dates are currently being booked but until then cuddle up to...