A Hundred Miles Off | Record Collection
By NICK SYLVESTER | June 16, 2006
BLOGGERS NEED NOT APPLY: But A Hundred Miles Off is good bar music
|
Granted the best song here is a big dig on the city of Boston, and Hamilton Leithauser’s reedy voice has gone from Dylanesque to Dylan forgery, and there’s no one massive track to rally behind – no “The Rat” or “We’ve Been Had” or even “Wake Up.” But what all the 19-year-olds with mp3 blogs and a stack of shitty indie promos aren’t telling you about this NYC rock band’s third album is that it sounds great in bars. Makes sense for that set too – no fey bushy-tailed bullshit, just the gritty banalities of growing old or knowing its around the corner. Slower, barely calypso lilts like “Louisiana” feel less like blind throwbacks, more like worn-in shoes, comfortable and above all reliable. “Tenleytown” has huge U2 stop-poverty-now chords, but the production, typical of the rest of Hundred Miles, is decidedly more working class – the instruments bleed together, which is easier on the ears and grounds the weary sentiment. Walkmen get their Dischord punk kicks out in “This Job Is Killing Me,” but the nostalgia runs only three chords deep. “You wear yourself out,” they say. On the Web
The Walkmen: http://www.marcata.net/walkmen/
Related:
Lost in Boston, Review: The Walkmen at Middle East, Hotter than ever, More 
- Lost in Boston
Walkmen songs, both live and on record, want to be gigantic.
- Review: The Walkmen at Middle East
It was strange to see the sparse instrumentation from which NYC’s The Walkmen drew their atmospheric, honey-dipped sound last Friday at the Middle East.
- Hotter than ever
The Hot Club Waterfront Festival returns this weekend with a lineup as diverse as the melting pot of 21-plus partygoers who will fill South Water Street throughout the weekend.
- Photos: The Walkmen
The Walkmen live at the Middle East downstairs, September 18, 2009
- Mixing it up
B. DOLAN and SAGE FRANCIS provided memorable highlights at this year’s Rock the Bells in Mansfield; watch the Strange Famous reps slay Jerky’s Bar (401.621.2244) with special guest SLEEP on THURSDAY (the 12th).
- Isobell, Putnam Smith, Sandbag, Ill by Instinct and more
More albums continue to be scheduled for May release. A day before the ISOBELL release show, PUTNAM SMITH will drop his second full-length, Goldrush, on May 29. Americana and roots fans, take note.
- Music Seen: Ocean and Pontiak
The day after Ocean's predictably under-attended (30-40 people) Cinco de Mayo performance at SPACE, a friend who also attended asked what I thought. "So loud," I said. "So slow," he responded. It wasn't hard to catch the reverence in both reactions.
- Music Seen: Rosetta and Cryptic Overcast
Local stalwarts Cryptic Overcast have carved out a niche for themselves as an almost-instrumental band with a sound as informed by heavy metal as it is by psychedelic and progressive rock.
- Hard-wired fuzz
The Inclined's December '08 debut, The First Day of Many, continues to captivate my attention with big hooks, spacey synths, and manipulated guitar riffs and squalls, at times encapsulated in fuzz and exploding with unabashedly catchy gems.
- Review: Guitar Hero: Smash Hits
When evaluating a new Guitar Hero — or any music-related game — it helps to picture a Venh Diagram consisting of three circles: "Good Songs," "Challenging Songs," and "Songs that are fun to play on plastic instruments."
- Song of herself
"Listen, I will go on record saying I love Feist, I love Neko Case. I love that music. But that shit's easy listening for the twentysomethings. It fucking is. It's not hard to listen to any of that stuff."
- Less
Topics:
CD Reviews
, Entertainment, Music, U2, More
, Entertainment, Music, U2, Folk Music, The Walkmen, The Walkmen, Hamilton Leithauser, Less
