The Walkmen “A Hundred Miles Off” RECORD
COLLECTION
Good things happen to people brave enough to limit themselves.
Maybe using a well-defined set of sounds brings out a bit of
creativity that open space intimidates away, or maybe it crafts a
theme for an album as elements intertwine, reinforcing each other.
Maybe cutting down on the accessories and complexity makes the big,
important stuff visible again, and keeping it all in one place
might just make sure it won’t go away.
The Walkmen have found this kind of place, and for their third
album, “A Hundred Miles Off,” they’ve decided not
to leave it. They’re painting with the same palette, made of
clangy, metallic guitars and upright piano, drums that put the skip
in your step, bass that sticks to the foundation or sings melodies
of its own, and vocals that sound alternately like singer Hamilton
Leithauser is letting you in on a secret or straining through
down-and-out mantras just high enough in his vocal range to
convince you he’s not joking.
“Louisiana,” the album’s first single, shows
how The Walkmen don’t just pick sounds this purposefully,
they compose this way too. First, the guitars introduce a thought,
which in this case sounds like forgetfulness and wide-open
possibilities. The drums push forward with more of a suggestion
than a demand, and the vocals leave dissonances suspended, because
“Louisiana” is the kind of song where everything will
end up where it needs to. When things develop, the vocals get
politely urgent, crafting a confident understanding that Leithauser
is singing something important. Finally the guitars reach the edge
of their ability to resolve the tension they’ve built, and a
brass section just silly enough to be taken seriously shows us
everything we’d need to see if, like Leithauser, we’ve
“got (our) hands full most of the time.”
Many bands’ songs build up tension or go to a set
destination. The problem is that they go to the same place over and
over again. Life doesn’t move back and forth between chorus
and verse, and even when The Walkmen set up a regular pattern, it
feels more like the way a mind trudges through the same emotions
than a purely aesthetic shift.
Using their thoughtfully limited palette, The Walkmen come up
with a gratifyingly realistic architecture to their songs. It seems
like the band is in control of the form, not the other way around,
and the irregularities are delightfully necessary. In life, when
something worth saying needs to be said, most don’t bother
making it rhyme or returning to the chorus. Ideas come out, not
rules, and things become repeated and asymmetrical. The Walkmen
treat music this way, and really, it makes them very easy to
trust.
“”mdash; Alex LaRue [email protected]