The Walkmen

You and Me

September 06, 2008

*** 1/2 / ****

By Mr. Marlowe

Released 2008

Thank the lucky stars: The Walkmen are back! After camping out with a vanity project (a remake of Harry Nilsson’s Pussycats) and a wholly disappointing pop effort (2006’s A Hundred Miles Off), respectively, this most curious band of the new millennium has returned to their roots with great redemption. Back is the eerie instrumentalism of their stunning 2002 debut, Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone and vanquished is the sense of a band struggling to be something they are not. Even if their latest effort doesn’t quite measure up to the brilliance of Everyone Who Pretended… or their masterpiece second album, the harder rocking Bows + Arrows, You and Me is nonetheless the return to form I’ve been waiting for.

Key to The Walkmen’s sound is the otherworldly heartbroken music box aesthetic. Between the spacey, metallic guitars, screeching, ethereal feedback, pulsating drumming, and singer Hamilton Leithauser’s lovelorn wail it isn’t so much a series of singles that wins a listener over as it is the overarching vibe of a full blown musical experience. It’s easy to go song-to-song sighting scores and missteps (the album has plenty of both), but when the sum total is more impressive than the individual parts that make up that sum what’s really the point? The point is to put this album on your stereo when you’re feeling blue and listen to it from start to finish bathing in its lovelorn wanting. Only then will a listener be able to truly appreciate all that The Walkmen have to offer.

Only time will be able to put into proper perspective this album’s true power. As it stands now You and Me is a very good album though not great. It has a few very good singles (the bell-ringing In the New Year the best of the bunch), but it’s obvious the individual songs are more concerned with setting a mood than being a quick shot of perfectly manufactured four-minute bliss. However, even with its subtle efficiency at creating a mood, greatness requires a bit more than sharing a comforting blanket with a familiar friend or serving as a reminder of the good old days. It requires something new, something one might have never expected, and a bit more grab-you-by-the-collar-and-shake-you thrill than You and Me manages.

No matter, I still wholeheartedly recommend You and Me to the broken hearted. Just because I haven’t yet uncovered You and Me’s greatness doesn’t mean others won’t. Greatness might be there or it might not, but it won’t hurt any trying to find out. And deciding for one’s self is what listening to The Walkmen is all about.

Best Songs: I Lost You, In the New Year, Canadian Girl, The Blue Route, On the Water