Lisbon
Lisbon was recorded over the course of eight months beginning in the fall of 2009 with You & Me producer Chris Zane (Passion Pit, Les Savy Fav, Tokyo Police Club). The band then traveled to Dallas to finish the album with producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Explosions in the Sky). Featuring the band’s signature vintage instrument-sound, Lisbon will showcase “a lot of stuff that’s Elvis-sounding, like early Elvis and Sun Records kind of sounds,” says frontman Hamilton Leithauser.
On their sixth studio LP, the Walkmen use mariachi horns and echoes of 1950s production styles to realize their wounded, anxious, and affecting songs.
With each album, The Walkmen wring more and more out of less and less, stripping songs to a simple pounding beat, washes of trebly organ, short and shimmery guitar riffs, and Hamilton Leithauser’s braying voice. (And sometimes they leave one or more of those elements out, just for the challenge of it.) Yet The…
“Don’t get heavy, let’s be light,” Hamilton Leithauser sings on “Woe Is Me,” and that seems to be the Walkmen's creed on Lisbon.
The crowning point of an already benchmarked past...Unfortunately for some the past can crowd the present, and with a decade of semi seminal releases gracing their back catalogue The Walkmen are a band whose very existence can incite an army of bedroom dwelling know-it-alls to spout selectively memorised, Google aided reference points until the mildly curious are bored to exclusion.
It’s hard to forget the desperate energy of The Walkmen’s breakout album, Bows + Arrows, when listening to about everything else they’ve recorded.
There's no Iberian influence beyond the title, but the Walkmen sound great to <strong>Tom Hughes</strong>