“Woe is Me”
from the album Lisbon
2010
iTunes
The Walkmen have a history of making loud, drunken, lamenting music, the sort of songs that are good for yelling at absent exes on particularly painful nights. Lisbon, their sixth studio album, generally a more subdued collection of tracks than those included in their past work, is a wonderful achievement — not because their signature tirades are gone (they’e not), but because it shows the band stretching itself and expanding its range with offbeat music genres. Lisbon upholds the city and captures the best music the band has to offer.
The track that sets the journey off is “Juveniles,” a soft, lumbering track in which frontman Hamilton Leithauser wheezes and howls his way through a vague story of a loved one, to end with the perennial line for describing teenage society: “You’re one of us, or one of them.” With the depressing downbeat, it’s not difficult to imagine the band getting inspiration from sitting at a Portuguese café, listening to an artist play mournful fado, a local melancholy music genre much like Latin American trova.
“Angela Surf City” brings back a little bit of the fast, furious and loud signature sound from The Walkmen. Crashing cymbals, an accelerated drum line, and lyrics hollered into the microphone make the track a whirlwind tour, and the most energetic one on the album, hands down.
Although the album is inspired by travels in Europe, there is a healthy dose of Americana imbedded in it, possibly as an allusion to home. In the song “Blue as Your Blood,” a constant, twangy guitar riff throughout recalls the score of Western movies, while “Torch Song” resolutely sounds like rocked-up bluegrass during the verses, with a constant, steady beat played on the guitar and drums. The band even adds distinct instrumentation: our own Mariachi Cardenal would be proud to hear the mariachi horns used to record the track “Stranded,” a wailing affair about the dismal existence of the narrator.
“Woe is Me” is another rare gem in the package. With an upbeat guitar riff and simple opening lyrics that sound like something by Ezra Koenig (“There’s a girl you should know / She was mine not so long ago”), the track picks up the rhythm of the album and, contrary to what the title might suggest, injects some youthfulness and beat back into the musical experience.
All too soon “Lisbon,” the final track, rolls around and brings the imaginary trip to Europe to a close. A slow, morose song, it shuffles along during a few minutes, a sad tune about an outsider in a country where he does not know the language or the place. It’s sadly touching in its loneliness and isolation as Leithauser sings “All the younger kids / Have gone away to sleep,” even after the production arranged a wonderfully swelling instrumentation behind the weary guitar lines and soft drums that provide the backbone for the song. It gently fades down over a beautiful, lazy and hesitant guitar solo.
The best part about Lisbon as an album is that it feels fresh and sincere. The characteristic Walkmen quality of the recording is spot on — Leithauser’s hoarse pleading voice coupled with the fuzzy reverb from the guitars and bass make it feel very intimate, not glossy and packaged like most studio albums. Listening to it, images of a lazy European vacation, catching trains, watching country houses and green fields go by, or people watching at the local café, are impossible to ignore. Over the nearly 45 minutes that make up the album, The Walkmen have pulled off the perfect soundtrack to the quintessential European vacation.