Thursday 23 September 2010
All my great designs
There’s a point in which “Juveniles”, the opening song on The Walkmen‘s Lisbon goes from being just your average jangly-guitared, indie pop song to being the gateway onto one of the year’s finer records, but don’t ask me to pinpoint it for you. It happens somewhere in it’s 4:27, but you won’t realize it until the song is almost over. That’s because The Walkmen are like a slow, smooth drink, one you savour over time, relishing each drop. The first sips is tasty, the second tangy, and by the time you take your third you’re feeling toasty. before you know it you’ll be drunk on the sweet nectar at the heart of Lisbon.
If ever a record could conjure images of place and time, Lisbon is certainly a sonic guide book through a bohemian enclave with cobble-stoned streets, cigarette smoking co-eds sunning themselves while sipping cappuccinos, heartbroken soccer hooligans too drunk to walk straight but not drunk enough to cry yet, and steel-eyed observers watching everything unfold from the edge of the piazza fountain. It’s painted with the rich yellows, burnt oranges, and blood red hues of Spain, but this could easily be a corner of NYC, Montreal, or just about anywhere at anytime. Lisbon creates its own atmosphere rather than trying to represent one, and in the process, The Walkmen have crafted their most coherent album yet. The swell of horns that opens “Stranded” gives me little heart palpitations. Set against the song’s its funeral march rhythm, Hamilton Leithauser’s boozy croon feels like a musical eulogy, and perfectly encapsulates the tender push and pull of the album. I’m not always sure what Leithauser is on about, but you get the sense that someone is either a) fucking with him; b) fucking him; or c) fucked with someone he once fucked and is ok with that.
Lisbon is a tense and restrained album with bright moments of reckless abandon (see “Victory” or the stellar “Angela Surf City” for proof of that). I’ve never been a big fan of The Walkmen, but always sense that they had the potential to make a record this poignant and precise. Fans may be turned off by its decidedly mid-tempo pace, but Lisbon is evidence that The Walkmen are a band at peak performance level, whether going pushing the pedal down to the floor or taking a leisurely stroll.
Lisbon was released September 14, 2010 on Fat Possum Records.
MP3: The Walkmen “Stranded”
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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 23rd, 2010 at 8:35 am and is filed under MP3, QBiM SPiNS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
