ULU,
London

28/10/08

Having hastily cobbled together a rag tag brass section for tonight’s show (a trick perfected throughout the

US leg of their tour) The Walkmen seem remarkably relaxed tonight. Passive, even.

Off-mic, Hamilton Leithauser is a shadow of the sinew-straining front man whose gritty presence simply demands your attention. No mean feat when the mic doesn’t work in the first place. Technical glitches aside, they ease into the softly spoken ‘New Country’ and ‘On the Water’ by way of polite introduction to latest album, ‘You and Me’, and it’s a languid beginning that’s never really disturbed.

Despite the sombre beauty of ‘In the New Year’ and the waltzing, piano-led ‘Red Moon’, – for their considered musical craft – it doesn’t translate into a particularly dynamic live show. Sorely lacking the darker edge that propelled them on Bows + Arrows, featherlight arrangements, a pedestrian pace and a palpable lack of intensity undermine their more intricate, layered intentions.

 

Regardless, Leithauser is in fine fettle – his throaty call to arm the only real menace in The Walkmen’s armoury dulled by their new sparse direction. ‘All Hands and the Cook’ lifts some of the brooding atmospheric of the Bows… era, Leithauser’s rasping vocal hacking through an organ-drenched backdrop, but it’s only a fleeting, subliminal flashback.

 

There’s a sense of guilt in constantly reverting to their earlier material and all its sinister proclamations instead of embracing what is, after all, a natural progression. It’s a sense  vindicated by the hair raising opening salvo of ‘The Rat’ that allows Leithauser to let loose, his bristling vocal delivered with unbridled gusto, fervently echoed back by the front rows, and the awkward naysayers. Perhaps we’ve just got some nerve?

Sherief Younis