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CD Reviews

The Walkmen | Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone (Vinyl Re-issue)

The Walkmen (2011)

By P. NICK CURRAN | January 17, 2012

3.0 Stars

The Walkmen released their debut record Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone 10 years ago this month — they're celebrating with the release of a limited run of high-fidelity vinyl. The band arrived from DC to a cluttered scene in early-aughts New York City, but found a niche somewhere between the drunken bravado of the Strokes and the macabre introspection of Interpol. Their first offering finds a similar big-city isolation in the crackling soprano of Hamilton Leithauser's tales of empty apartments and broken relationships, all told with the underpinnings of barebones instrumentation reliant on atmospheric layers of reverb-soaked guitar and the accents of light, twinkling piano. Ten years later, the record hits every bit as powerfully. The punchier songs play through the haze, the rooftop moments countered by hungover mornings of reflection. The record has no defining moment as much as it does a series of specific temporal markers. Leithauser never quite finds resolution to his problems, yet he lays them out in painstaking detail transcendent of generational context, each track a guide to separate neuroses. For a band who live mostly in the high end — both vocally and instrumentally — this hi-def vinyl re-issue delivers a denser sound. It works as a re-introduction to the band and as a worthy addition to the Walkmen catalogue in its own right.

The Walkmen refuse to break stride
"My lord, where's the satisfaction? It's all uphill for me," croons Hamilton Leithauser in "Victory," a standout track from the Walkmen's new Lisbon (Fat Possum), and a perfect example of the sort of musty and swelling anthems the New York band — who come to Royale next Thursday — have mastered over the past decade.
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Various Artists | Where the Action Is: Los Angeles Nuggets 1965 - 1968
More than three years in the making, the most recent installment of Rhino's legendary archival garage-rock series offers an amazingly comprehensive excavation of an absurdly fertile scene.
Various Artists | Nippon Girls: Japanese Pop, Beat & Bossa Nova 1966–1970
Girl-group records are great and everything, yet the countless compilations out there were becoming a little hit-or-miss until 2005, when the great Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found box set finally gave this diverse genre a proper taxonomy.
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The notion that regional musical flavors exist independently in American cities is quickly becoming an archaic truism, seeing as how the world really is a stage these days, at least in the digital sense.
Bearstronaut | Broken Handclaps
There's a distinct absence of wildlife or astronauts on Lowell electronica quartet Bearstronaut's latest release.
Avi Buffalo | Avi Buffalo
Look, I get it: the last thing we need right now is yet another band who can be described as “sun-baked,” “reverb-soaked,” or even just “psychedelic.” But Avi Buffalo (I know! An animal name to boot!) are worth your attention for a few reasons.
The Birthday Massacre | Pins and Needles
If you disregard the distorted guitars, the spooky sound effects, and the unapologetically gothtarded imagery, not much separates the Birthday Massacre from honest-to-gosh bumblegum pop.
Review: Brandon Flowers | Flamingo
Brandon Flowers has gone on record saying he brought the songs on Flamingo to his fellow bandmates for the next Killers album and was given the brush-off.
Review: Kevin Dunn | No Great Lost: Songs 1979–1985
Casa Nueva Industries (2010)
Review: Crocodiles | Sleep Forever
With remarkable swiftness, Crocodiles tick off all the key characteristics of a band in the thriving lo-fi indie/punk/garage scene.
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Topics: CD Reviews , Music, The Walkmen, The Walkmen, More

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