>>PREVIEW
THE WALKMEN
Thursday, June 28
Warehouse
Whether it’s because of their willingness to indulge a hodgepodge of influences or in spite of it, few modern bands are as distinctive as The Walkmen. They can channel the aural chaos of the Velvet Underground one minute and kitschy surf-rock nostalgia the next (or even both at once). However, there is no mistaking the reverb-soaked guitars and shambolic drumming for anything but a Walkmen track, even without vocalist Hamilton Leithauser’s Dylan-with-Laryngitis croak.
It’s not that the New York outfit is averse to change – they’ve consistently honed their sound in over seven years and are set to expand their sonic palette again on their as-yet-untitled album due out this fall. It’s just that the members of The Walkmen have been playing together in one form or another since the fifth grade. With that much time together, it’s only natural the band has found its niche.
"You can try to be different," Leithauser says of his band’s songwriting, "because otherwise it gets boring for us to be playing the same thing over and over. But then it always ends up sounding like our band in the end. You’re trying to make it sound different, but I guess we have limits that we set on ourselves." He hesitates before adding, "I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing."
Despite any self-imposed limits, The Walkmen’s signature sound leaves a lot of breathing room. 2006’s A Hundred Miles Off found the band incorporating mariachi horns and a breezier atmosphere, and their next album is set to add new layers to their typically sparse sound.
"There’s a lot more instrumentation," says Leithauser when asked about the band’s new direction. "On Hundred Miles Off, we just wanted to do us in a room. Just blaze through it, and don’t over-think anything. But now we have really elaborate string and horn sections. It’s taken us a long time to put these songs together, but I think they’re a lot more complex and a lot more interesting."
The quest to keep things interesting has found the band venturing out in unexpected directions. On 2006’s Pussy Cats, a song-for-song cover of the album Harry Nillson recorded with John Lennon, The Walkmen rip through rock classics with an infectious mix of fervour and frivolity.
Pussy Cats had its share of detractors, most notably the classicists shocked at the band’s gall in remaking Nillson’s esteemed work, but the original was recorded as a lark, and the cover version is the same. It’s a send-off to the band’s recently closed recording studio, and a chance for The Walkmen to show off their more light-hearted side – as on "Loop de Loop," which features a roomful of rockers shouting the kids song’s chorus all on a particularly raucous Saturday night. It’s a garage-rock classic 30 years removed from the movement’s heyday.
The Walkmen are also exercising their sense of humour with John’s Journey, a collaborative novel they’ve been writing between touring and recording. Leithauser is enthusiastic about the project, but it will be awhile before fans can satisfy their Walkmen cravings in paperback form.
"It’s been a little while since we worked on it," admits Leithauser. "It’s been awhile since we toured, so I guess that’s why. It’s really something we did when we were beyond bored. All the other ways of entertaining ourselves in the van for 10 hours a day were getting really old, and then we came up with that and it was funny for a long time. Maybe when we get back into a big touring mode, we’ll wrap it up." |
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