The Walkmen bring several musical flavors on their sixth studio album, “Lisbon”. It is a lesson in carefully labored over nostalgia. Each track seems to have an air of longing towards either a person or place. It also sounds very West Coast in nature, quite unlike the New York scene the band is a part of.
The clean gurgling guitars are the most noticeable arrangements within the music, as they chug along and create the vision for Hamilton Leithauser’s nasally vocals. The guitars do have an air of surf rock in some of the better songs like “Woe Is Me”, which combines the upbeat catchy music with not so happy feeling lyrics.
This seems to be a theme in a lot of the songs, which were mostly inspired from a trip to Lisbon, Portugal. A lot of lonely, beautiful nights seem to be the gist of what the trip was like, based on the end result of these songs. Opener “Juveniles” kicks things off with fuzzy bass and the twanging guitars. It’s a great mid-tempo track.
There are a few harder rockers here as well. “Angela Surf City” is probably the most direct attempt at a rocker, while “Woe Is Me” and “Victory” are also faster tempo tracks.
The tension and release effects of “Blue As Your Blood” are really great, and the interesting horn arrangements in “Stranded” make it one of the more original sounding tracks compared to the rest. Mundane tasks like shoveling the snow become soul-searching events in “While I Shovel The Snow. We’ve all had moments such as this, and it is very relatable. Closer “Lisbon” ends things nicely with a slow lazy pace with a few crescendos.
The vintage production really fits well with the nostalgic feel of this record. I think that while it’s not a perfect record by any means, most of the songs flow very well, and each one is strong in it’s own way. The clean guitar, piano, and nasally vocals make for a complete sound, this record can be appreciated by fans of classic and contemporary rock alike.
8/10
Great job with the review... you really can talk about music well... keep it up!
ReplyDelete