A Hundred Miles Off
After two stellar full-lengths of wintery urban ennui The Walkmen have finally struck out for the countryside with the aptly titled A Hundred Miles Off, trading the emetic if captivating angularity of their earlier work for a more robust sound. If *Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone* and *Bows and Arrows* presented The Walkmen as young exiles fleeing across ice-slicked fire escapes, then *A Hundred Miles Off* sees them granted asylum in some bucolic protectorate. The Walkmen’s sense of shimmering dislocation remains, but their “all or nothing” urgency has been replaced by a vague sense of lazy unease. “Louisiana”, *A Hundred Miles Off*’s melancholic opener, wastes no time in announcing their change in direction with a slow wash of bent guitar strings and a languid bayou tempo that owes a great deal to the Americana-tinged fantasies that Bob Dylan and The Band were cooking up in the summer of 1967. By backing off from the hypnotic two-chord strum of their earlier work The Walkmen have created a unique and affecting record imbued with an adventurous spirit that can only bode well for the group’s future work.
After two records packed with the kind of unrelenting, energetic furor that rock music built its rep on, Hamilton Leithauser and co. embrace blurred sonics and a Dylanesque squeal on their latest album.
The Walkmen are already responsible for one of the best albums of this half-spent decade: the woozy 2004 disc Bows + Arrows, which focused the atmospheric jangle of the band's debut into a rougher, angrier, but no less lyrical sound. So with that under their belt, The Walkmen can be excused for missing more than they…
As the album progresses, the drums become as painful as the vocals, though the final tracks are a welcome change of direction.
Shaking off the wintry fog of Bows + Arrows like a parka come springtime, the Walkmen return with A Hundred Miles Off, an album of lighter, brighter songs that still maintain the band's fantastic sense of atmosphere.