This one's definitely a grower. I don't even want to know about the number of people who bought this album on the strength of "The Rat", a fantastic song but not in any way indicative of this album's sound, and at that moment immediately swore off buying another Walkmen album ever again. That's too bad, because once you get around the fact that this is largely an atmospheric record, it works very well. The Walkmen are a five-piece rock band, yes, but they appear to be influenced less by other rock groups than by singer-songwriters like Tom Waits. Basically, if the spirit of Waits could be split among five guys in a band, that would be the Walkmen. This was the first time they found songs that were worthy of their intense command of dark and panicked atmosphere, and while it's not the best album they've made (that would be
You & Me) it's probably the second best. The constant alternating between gauzy, feedback-laden ballads and aggressive rock tracks works well, and Hamilton Leithauser's voice (despite its obvious similarity to Bob Dylan's) is the perfect one for this band. Nobody else sounds
quite like them, and I think that's a worthy enough achievement to celebrate. They evoke classic American folk music without falling into a single one of the obvious cliches practiced by pretty much every mediocre folk group--in its own way it's as brilliant a reinvention of blues and folk as that made by Led Zeppelin forty years earlier. But when it's all over it'll be the sound--not the songs--you'll be remembering.
MY RATING:
8.3
The Walkmen - "Little House of Savages"
