After three LPs, one full album cover of an old John Lennon and Harry Nilsson record, a guest appearance on The OC, and a few seasons of coaching soccer, The Walkmen present quite possibly their strongest record yet. You & Me balances the Latin rhythms from their not-quite-as-strong-as-it-should-have-been A Hundred Miles Off, the late night musings of Everyone Who Pretended to like Me is Gone, and the intensity of Bows + Arrows.
Moving from album to album, The Walkmen have gone through enough shifts in tone and themes that they remain always interesting; however, never being so progressive that they alienate their long time fans. And You & Me maybe the musical culmination of everything they’ve done since breaking away from Jimmy Fire*Eater.
You & Me isn’t so much a growing album — though there is plenty of growth — though it is a record about growth. Compare the desperate hunt for fun from Bows + Arrows, where Hamilton Leithauser complained, “When I used to go out/I’d know everyone I saw/Now I go out alone/If I go out at all,” with the lament of how “these wild nights/are no fun”, where, as he notes in the first track, “Dónde Está la Playa” that “it’s back to the battle again.” At the same time, there’s hope for a new life on the way, a mature, post-collegiate sort of thing where even if Leithauser may “still be living/at the old address” but he still knows that it’s true, “it’s going to be a good year,” where he never hears the bad news. So if the record can be heard as a massive road trip, the kind where the travelers constantly discover the world around them, that’s even more appropriate. As we’re taken from Mexico to the beach to New York and everywhere in-between, The Walkmen deliver so well that it comes off more fulfilling than another read-through of Kerouac. Each song brings about more maturity. Each piece moves with a fluency as if the world revealed all of its secrets.
Set against these laments, these nostalgic looks on the past with a newly realized optimism of the future, the band lies down various arrangements as fantastic as they’ve ever been. Matt Barrick’s drum fills remain as chaotic as always, never missing a beat, while Paul Maroon leads us through effortless chord switches and mad strumming. Peter Bauer and Walter Martin maintain many of the same lines, weaving their rhythms through and from each other, sporting a keyboard so filled with buzz that it almost sounds like another guitar. No one ever becomes too dominating, leaving plenty of layers to discover with every listen. Without that, “On the Water” may not have come out as the frightening
Leone Western or “Red Moon” that weeping waltz.
The Walkmen pull all the right punches, pining and romanticizing, delivering one of their strongest records in years. They shift gracefully through moods and styles, culminating finally in one-two-three punch of fantastic ballads that make you want to hit rewind and listen to the entire thing all over again. With this record, The Walkmen have finally been able to fulfill the potential that they’ve always possessed.
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