Whereas the New Pornographers, Spoon, and Broken Social Scene all more or less met expectations, the Walkmen rarely fail to exceed them. A bit more stripped down than 'You & Me', my choice for the best album in their catalog, 'Lisbon' finds the Walkmen once again doing what they do best. Lisbon provides a vehicle for Hamilton Leithauser's emotional vocals, Paul Maroon's deliberate guitar, and Matt Barrick's powerful percussion.
Leithauser is able to cut loose in his traditional fashion on the choruses of 'Victory' and 'Angela Surf City', the album's best track, and as good as anything they've done since 'The Rat'. He keeps an even pace on 'Woe is Me' and the opening "Juveniles", a track on which Ham sets the stage by crooning "You're one of us, or one of them". 'Blue as Your Blood' is like a version of 'On the Water' that doesn't reach a crescendo. And like some of the best stuff from their previous albums, Lisbon is littered with gems that require some additional mining, such as 'Torch Song' and the horn backed 'Stranded'.
Five albums in, the Walkmen may not be breaking new ground, but they've found their sound, and they're continually perfecting it. And I should mention, they are, in my opinion, the best touring act in the country. The first and third videos were taken at a show I attended in August (not by me, though. They were filmed by other people).
So I haven't really been doing concert reviews or recaps lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been going to shows. August was a little on the slow side in the wake of the Pitchfork Festival, but September has been picking it back up. In the last week or so, we had three really great shows.
I finally saw J. Spaceman for the first time at P-fork, and that show was essentially the hour long outdoor version of their regular show, so the set was pretty similar, only about a half hour or forty minutes longer. Most of the extra time was taken up by older material, which I particularly enjoyed since I didn't see any of the shows in support of those albums.
The P-fork set made appearances here and there, mostly in a good way. He again opened with 'You Lie You Cheat', which devolves into noise, then cuts beautifully into 'Shine A Light', from the Laser Guided Melodies album. He finished the set, again, with 'Come Together' from Ladies and Gentlemen.... which segued into the old Spacemen 3 tune 'Take Me to the Other Side'. Added in along the way were some new songs (Death Take Your Fiddle), some Spiritualized classics ('Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space', 'Lay Back in the Sun') and another Spacemen 3 number (either 'Walkin' With Jesus' or 'Sound of Confusion', depending on what album you have). He ended the night with a rousing rendition of 'Lord Can You Hear Me'.
Their live set, at least indoors is very loud and engrossing. You've heard the phrase "wall of sound". Well, this is an ocean of sound, and you're drowning in it. It just absolutely engulfs the entire venue. The pacing was pretty good. The two songs that start this set really draw you in. There's little to no crowd rapport, not even a "thank you" between songs, though I think he said it on the way out. It's really quite an experience. An excellent live show, and one I hope I get the chance to see again.
You Lie You Cheat
Take Me To The Other Side (Live)
Grand Ole Party opened. I saw them open for someone earlier this year as well. Three piece band with a female drummer, who also handles lead vocals. She's got quite a voice. Entertaining act. The Walkmen @ Metro 9/12/08
This is the third or fourth time I've seen them in the last year and a half, so it's been interesting to see them go from supporting "A Hundred Miles Off" to trying out some new material, to eventually supporting that material, most of which appears on the new album "You and Me". It's an album that didn't really grab me at first, certainly not as quickly as the last one, but after five or six listens, it's really grown on me and might be my favorite album yet.
The set lasted a little under an hour and half, which is probably the longest set I've seen them do. The set was heavy on the album, and light on everything else. They played the classics. 'Wake Up', 'Little House of Savages', 'Thinking of a Dream I Had'. They played some songs that are much better live than on the record, like 'All Hands and the Cook', and 'What's In It For Me'. The new album has a lot of horn parts, so they were able to play 'Louisiana'. And they proved again that 'The Rat' is the best four minutes of live music on the planet.
But the new album really made up the meat of the show, and fortunately, it's a really good album for a live show. It's got some slower tracks that help round out the pacing, but the standouts from the album were the standouts in the live set. 'Donde Esta La Playa', 'On the Water', 'the Blue Route', 'Canadian Girl' all delivered. The crowd seemed fairly familiar with the new material, as loud cheers went out upon hearing the opening strums of 'In the New Year', the first single and a real highlight of the show.
As usual, the Walkmen, more than any other band I've seen a bunch of time, are more than worth the price of admission. Along with the Super Furry Animals, they're probably may favorite act currently in existence, and their live shows are really terrific. The opening acts were pretty interesting too. Ezra Furman and the Harpoons were kind of a straightforward pop-rock four piece with a funny frontman, and klezmer-rock six piece Golem were, well, something I wouldn't expect to see at a rock show, and something I'd even less expect to like, but they put on a very entertaining set. No complaints.
Small crowd, but Monday night shows aren't typically heavily attended, especially for lesser known acts like the Broken West. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a great show. I saw these guys open for the Walkmen last year, and I've seen them another four times since, and they always put on a good set. They released a new album last week, their second, so the set drew heavily from that, but they worked in some favorites from the first album as well. This is the type of show where you can hang around and chat with the band afterward, so that's kind of fun. I try to wait to buy albums at shows if possible, because I think they get a bigger piece of the pie. This is an L.A. based band, around Silverlake I believe, so it's nice to support local acts from my hometown.
A band called the Builders and the Butchers opened for them. They're kind of folky, but really heavy themes. Lost of death and afterlife sorts of stuff. Like if the Decemberists were a little harder and sang a lot of dirges. But the music is really engaging. I usually need to listen to an album a few times before it connects, but I was digging their debut on first listen. I was wearing a t-shirt from the Moose's Tooth, a pizzeria and brew pub in anchorage. The lead singer saw it started up a conversation about Alaska. Turns out half this band is from Anchorage, and a couple went to the school where my brother used to teach. Small world.
First live show of the new year for me. I skipped the first two bands, figuring I'd be there in plenty of time to get a good spot, but that turned out to be a bit of a bad move. Still weaseled my way into a good viewing are, but the place was packed when I showed up, which isn't surprising. The Walkmen can fill larger venues than Schuba's. They played a bunch of new stuff, almost half the set, and one song that I recognized at the time, but can't remember now. They played almost nothing off of Hundred Miles Off. List of what I can remember:
Little House of Savages
138th Street
Thinking of a Dream I Had
No Christmas While I'm Talking
What's In It for Me?
Wake Up
Another One Goes By
Set lasted roughly an hour, which wasn't surprising, because they put a lot of energy into each song, so I have to figure that takes a lot of a person. I was disappointed that they didn't play Emma, the Rat, or a lot of stuff off the last album, but I can't complain. It was an hour of solid entertainment.
White Rabbits played right before and I thought they sounded sort of Walkmen-esque, but a little more accessible. I'll check out their other stuff. All in all, not a bad start to 2008. Here's a clip someone recorded at the show of Wake Up:
And again, I'm always disappointed that I think there are a lot of people who really like that version of Another One Goes By, but who have never heard the original Mazarin/Quentin Stoltzfus version, which I think is superior. Which isn't to say the Walkmen version isn't excellent. I just don't like it as much as the original. Judge for yourself:
There are bands who get on stage and lack the ability to re-create the magic of the recording studio. There are bands who get on stage and sound exactly like they do on their records, which is good, but not exactly what you want from the live experience. There are bands who, on stage, transcend what they're able to do on a record.
Then there are the Walkmen. From the opening note to the final farewell, it's pure, nonstop energy. Their albums are fantastic, but they were made for the stage. It's not so much a collection of instruments as it a cacophony of sound. It so loud, and so dense that it just hits you like a blast of wind. But amazingly, you're still able to pick out every distinctive sound present in their studio tracks. I saw these guys at Pitchfork last summer. A big open space isn't what they're best suited to. But get them in a tiny room packed with 160 people, like Schuba's, and they're really in their element.
First things first, the Broken West led the night off with a half hour of music from their new LP "I Can't Go On, I'll Go On." I'd listened to it about 8-10 times in the last week, and I was looking forward to their set. Pretty straightforward powery-pop type stuff. Pretty accessible and easy to listen to. They played (if I remember correctly):
Down in the Valley (see below)
So it Goes
On the Bubble
Shiftee
Big City
Slow
Brass Ring
It was a solid half hour of music.
Then the Walkmen came out, and I'm gonna be honest, they played a bunch of stuff I haven't heard before. And quite frankly, that would usually piss me off, but the way the night flowed, it didn't really bother me. It just cranked up the anticipation for the next song. In 2006, they released a song for song remake of Harry Nilsson's "Pussy Cats", so I'm guessing they played some stuff off of that. And let's get the negatives out of the way early: no We've Been Had; no Little House of Savages; no Emma, Get Me a Lemon. That did kind of suck, I'm not gonna lie. But what they did play was pretty amazing. Among the songs in the setlistsetlist:
Louisiana (assisted on horns by one of the guys from the Broken West, and some other guy) (see below)
All Hands and the Cook
Another One Goes By (still not as good as the Mazarin version)
They may have played Don't Get Me Down (Come on Over Here), but my memory is a little fuzzy
Wake Up
Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone
The Rat
They're Winning
Blizzard of '96
They also may have played the North Pole
Louisiana was clearly the highlight...until they played Wake Up, which was off the charts. And just when you think they couldn't get any better, they dusted off The Rat, which, well, I'll be honest. I have never stood through a better four minutes of live music than the version of the Rat that they played tonight. It's simply a song that was meant to be played live, to a small audience, with an incredibly loud mix. If I could bottle that four minutes...
On the downside, they skipped the tracks mentioned above, and they only played for about an hour. In their defense, it was 11:00 on a Sunday night, and it was their second show of the evening, and sitting through an hour, you'd wonder how they had the energy to go through that twice in one night.
The moral of the story is that if you get a chance to see a band this polished and this impressive in such a small venue, you need to do it. You won't be disappointed. Sample tracks below.
And I know they didn't play it, but I still love this song:
I'm going to Schuba's (roughly 160 person occupancy) on Sunday night to see the Walkmen with the Broken West. Here's a taste of what I've been listening to in preparation.
"Another One Goes By" is actually a Mazarin track covered by the Walkmen on their most recent album "A Hundred Miles Off". The version presented here is the Mazarin version, even though it's says it's the Walkmen version (but that's OK, because the Mazarin version is better).
And the Broken West stuff is really good too. Really looking forward to seeing them.
