AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #360: THE WALKMEN

A Guest Posting by SWC

JC writes………………………………

Today’s guest contributor doesn’t know I’m doing this.  You can call it a bit of intellectual theft.

SWC has, this very day, completed an excellent series this past month over at No Badger Required in which he called on the services of a musical jury, drawn from visitors to his consistently excellent blog, to nominate Rocks Greatest W – and by that he was seeking out  the best singer/band whose name begins with ‘W’ and not somebody who likes to stimulate their own genitals.

Coming in (ahem!!) at #13 was The Walkmen.  As it turned out, SWC went on to list ten great songs by the band, which I immediately wanted to turn into an ICA.  Which I’m now doing.

First up, an intro…from wiki.

“The Walkmen is an American indie rock band formed in New York City, in 2000. The band consists of Hamilton Leithauser (vocals), Paul Maroon (guitar, keyboards), Walter Martin (bass, organ), Peter Matthew Bauer (organ, bass) and Matt Barrick (drums) – all former members of Jonathan Fire*Eater and the Recoys.

Initially active from 2000 to 2013, they are known as part of the 2000s-era post-punk revival in New York City. The band released seven studio albums during their initial run: Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone (2002), Bows + Arrows (2004), A Hundred Miles Off (2006), “Pussy Cats” Starring the Walkmen (2006), You & Me (2008), Lisbon (2010) and Heaven (2012).

The band went on hiatus in 2013, with Leithauser, Bauer and Martin all pursuing solo careers, and Barrick joining Fleet Foxes in a session capacity. In 2023, the band reunited for an extensive tour named The Revenge Tour.”

And now, here’s what appeared on No Badger Required last month. Over to SWC….

I’m going to start by quoting, not one, not two but three members of the Musical Jury, who all rather interestingly said the same thing about The Walkmen.

“Despite the fact that they’ve only got one good song….”

Yet they still voted for them, heavily in some cases.

Now, I don’t want to turn this entire blog into a Walkmen tribute site in order to prove my point but I definitely will if that kind of Bolshevikian insubordination continues in the ranks. The Walkmen have about 75 good songs (admittedly the blog wouldn’t last that long and its almost worth daring me). I will now list them all (well ten of them) in no real order of their brilliance. If I voted in this countdown, The Walkmen would have had twenty more points. Just saying.

The “one good song” that I suspect that they are talking will be this one,

The Rat  (2004, Record Collection Records, Taken from ‘Bows + Arrows’)

Largely because it is quite a song and to be honest if this was the only Walkmen song that ever saw the light of day then it would still be heads and shoulders above nearly every other song that was ever written or released. It was also Badger’s favourite song and for that alone, it stands unchallenged as a moment of beauty and angsty post punk excellence. It is the sort of song that makes you throw yourself around the lounge like a petulant teenager.

Luckily for us, The Walkmen didn’t just split up after recording ‘The Rat’ (I mean they’d already released an album before they recorded ‘The Rat’ anyway, but surely you get my point). They released seven albums in total, all of them extraordinarily good. I’ve written before in the Nearly Perfect Series about ‘Lisbon’, which is the Walkmen album that I think is their greatest but if you twisted my arm hard enough I’d also grab albums six and five (in that order) and waggle those in your face as examples of nearly perfect records.

Here are two tracks from ‘Heaven’, the title track and ‘Heartbreaker’, both were released as singles from it.

Heaven (2012, Bella Union Records)

Heartbreaker  (2012, Bella Union Records)

The fifth album was the more intimate and stripped back, ‘You & Me’ is also a wonderful listen, full of textured songs that when explored properly were full of lyrics that were about loss, yearning and rejection, the vocals of Leithauser are outstanding throughout it. Here are two songs from it, my favourite track from it (which featured in the second season of Breaking Bad, in case you recognise it) and the best single from it.

Red Moon  (2008, Fierce Panda Records)

In the New Year  (2008, Fierce Panda Records)

Let’s go back to ‘Lisbon’ and explore that a bit more shall we – and we should because its one of the greatest indie guitar records made in the last fifteen years and you should ignore a statement like that at your peril my friends. Here are two tracks from it, the first one is a bit gentle and see Leithauser almost crooning over a tinkly piano backdrop. The second one is almost alt country, but it kind of forgets that when the first chorus kicks in and the guitars soar.

While I Shovel The Snow  (2010, Bella Union Records)

Juveniles  (2010, Bella Union Records)

The Walkmen should have been massive after, ‘The Rat’ launched their careers, and the album that followed it, ‘Bows + Arrows’ should have cemented them somewhere near the top of indie’s ladder for a few years to come. It didn’t and for some reason it remains slightly unloved, which is a shame because it houses brilliant tracks like this.

138th Street  (2004, Record Collection Records)

Also criminally ignored is the very early work of The Walkmen, the stuff that they released a few months after the break up of Jonathan Fire*eater. The self titled debut EP for instance was long thought to be lost forever until it was reissued in 2009 on the Startime International Label. It was originally recorded three years before the released of the bands debut single ‘The Rat’ but already those flirtations with synths that appear ten years later are there. It also reminds me of the work of Pavement around the time of ‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’, no bad thing at all.

Summer Stage  (2001, Startime International Records)

I’m going to end with my second favourite Walkmen track, purely because if you badged all these up into an Imaginary Compilation Album (and there’s an idea for a series) it would make a great album closer.

Angela Surf City  (2010, Bella Union Records, Taken from ‘Lisbon’)

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JC adds…..

I really hope SWC is OK with what I’ve done here.  I’m sure, if I’d asked him, that he’d have sat down and crafted a ‘proper’ ICA, possibly re-ordering the tracks and providing a bit more in the way of commentary….but I’m very happy with it as it reads right now.

Keep your eyes peeled next week for another guest ICA – one that I’m particularly pleased about as it come from one of my favourite writers out there and covers a type of music that doesn’t appear often enough on this particular blog.