2 out of 5

Label: Record Collection

Producer: Dave Sardy

Man, I just can’t do it.  I can’t remember the exact reason I picked up the first Walkmen EP – I think I dug the design and I was big on finding new labels to collect then, so Startime International (Star*time?) was just starting and in my indie fever I wanted to get in on the ground floor… but whatever the reason, I was like HOT DAMN THIS IS MY NEW FAVORITE BAND and it took me a while to realize that I only ever listened to the first track, ‘Wake Up’, and that the rest of the disc never stuck.  ‘Wake Up’ is totes an anthemic, catchy single, as is ‘The Rat’ on ‘Bows + Arrows.’  I still dig that song.  I still can’t remember much of the rest of the EP.

Time passed – as it does, as I too often remark – and I bought other CDs and kept enlarging my collection so that I could tape it to my penis and waggle it at ladies who wouldn’t date me (perhaps because I kept brandishing my wee all bedecked in tape and compact discs, I dunno), and I’m pretty sure I just typed that because I used the word ‘enlarging,’ and thus can only follow it with a penis reference.  At some point before their debut album, New York got on the bandwagon and starting going pee all over The Walkmen parade, so my panties got bunched and I probably ditched the EP and said fie to it all.  But I secretly listened to their debut album – ‘Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone’ – in shadowy corners of Tower Records… and really dug ‘Wake Up,’ but didn’t feel like I was missing much on the rest of the disc.

AND I THINK IT’S STILL TRUE YEAH GO CAPS

A million albums later, I realized Dave Sardy had produced one of their discs (AND John Congleton?  Aw, man) and so I bought it.  A million listens later, ‘The Rat’ is a pretty catchy song.  It’s not that the disc is bad at all, and it’s not that it’s particularly boring – I do find myself nodding my head at points, and ‘What’s In It For Me’ is a pretty effective caterwauling intro, the whining vocals and shimmery guitar a great lead-in to the stomp of ‘Rat.’  But it all fades together thereafter, even the other single, ‘Little House of Savages,’ which lacks a hooky chorus and so falls back on machine gun percussion and a nice guitar / key mélange… but, y’know, guitar / key mélanges are sorta the name of the game for the group, and they make good on that reverby drone for the rest of the disc.  I call Hamilton Leithauser’s vocals whiny and they are, but I don’t mind it.  It matches the ringing pitch of the music, perhaps too well, lacking much definition to break that wall of sound.  …But his lyrics are fairly lame.  I want to accept the group as poetic, but the tales are generally straight ahead relationship woes and I don’t think I care about a single thing that’s said.  Whoops.

Most offensively…  I can’t really hear Sardy on this.  I need to give the album a go with some better headphones, but even on recordings where his work might be more buried, I can sense the ‘depth’ of his touch.  Maybe because the other Walkmen disc I heard was produced by Greg Talenfeld, who has a similar rough yet clean low-end approach to Sardy I’m just not hearing what he brought to the session, but I feel like the flush sound of the group would’ve worked well with what I associate as his ‘style’ and instead it just all sort of blends.

Which is my end statement.  There’s nothing wrong with it, and uninteresting lyrics haven’t too negatively impacted other albums I’ve enjoyed.  It’s well composed and feels purposeful, I just can’t do it.  Nothing sticks except for one bright single; nothing moves me much outside of the moment I’m hearing it.  I dig the group’s prolificness and so would like to hear their other albums.  Perhaps then I’ll come back around to appreciating this one moreso.  whoooooooo knowwsssss

…

update… post a re-listen on better headphones… The Sardyness comes through a little more, assisting the band to fully fill up space and perhaps influencing the dropping out and building up of the few elements the band uses – keyboard layers, bass lines, but overall the review still stands.  The record just trails off into blase after you get the gist.