I Ate My DVD Collection

So when I originally planned to write the review, that title was what I first wrote, because I wanted my little “this is my life” paragraph to explain how when I got my car inspected, they found that my car battery was leaking acid inside the car, which sounds a lot worse than it is.  But that’s really all I had to say about it; that and thank God my car is okay, I love everything about the way it drives, I just want to take its CD player outside and viciously murder it.  But that’s that about that.

I’m overjoyed at how my contributors have stepped up their game of late.  Their reviews, probably as a result of being less frequent, are overall better than mine, which I love.  Feels like bringing in hired guns (and if you wish to see that analogy explored further, check out my own contributor bio over at BOTO).  And I also know that this is probably a punctuated equilibrium thing, and that these runs will be the exception, not the rule, and I’m perfectly cool with that (but I do dare my contributors to prove me wrong).  Still, if it gets me to step up my game, awesome.

This review was long-delayed, and I think it was because I wanted this review to be bigger than the album itself, because I think this jumped to my favorite album of the year basically the second time I listened to it all the way through and has only solidified itself as such since.  I was just looking for an angle, and thanks to previewing it with Ben and Kriti, I think it’s well-developed enough to finally write about here.

I think that this album is important in balancing out this year in music.  Up until this album’s release, the physical version of which will happen on August 19th (you can buy it digitally for 5 bucks that go to charity here! Do what I did and be a good person!), the great indie rock albums of the year, which in my opinion are: Devotion by Beach House, Red, Yellow & Blue by Born Ruffians, Visiter by The Dodo’s, Nouns by No Age, and Vampire Weekend’s self titled album, have all been youthful.  When I say youthful, that can be applied in different ways; Born Ruffians is about teenage awkwardness and the love that is borne and hampered by it, Vampire Weekend is so college it just switched majors from “Being like by all the cool kids” to “Being dismissed, but still secretly liked, by all the cool kids”, Nouns is an album that glories in being undeveloped, ragged, and teenaged, The Dodo’s are just generally bright-eyed, and Beach House implies in both theme and the name of their band what they stand for – a summer vacation.

The Walkmen stand for none of these things on their newest album, You & Me.  The one word that has stayed in my mind about it is mature.  All of the albums mentioned above were either the first or second full-length from their band; this is the Walkmen’s fourth LP, fifth if you include their note-by-note cover of Harry Nilsson’s 1974 Album Pussy Cats, titled Pussy Cats Starring The Walkmen, and you can really hear how confident they are in their sound.  In addition, all the above albums except for No Age were released in March or earlier, with Nouns coming out in May.  The music industry had taken its yearly break for summer tours and festivals, and those of us who can’t blow hundreds of dollars one weekend for a music festival have been without something fresh for a while.  So here comes You & Me, the perfect introduction to the second half of the music year, hopefully an indicator of things to come, in addition to showing us why child’s play is just that.

Beyond that, however, you can tell that this album is about adult love, not young love.  And this isn’t even the adult love I talked to Kriti about, where you go on a first date, a second date, and you begin a relationship with having a relationship as the stated intent (as opposed to young love, where you see a girl in your chemistry class and you Chem Is Try to get her to make out with you).  There’s both the “I’m still in love with you, after all these friggin’ long years” love (“On The Water”), the “we’re both older and without love, so what the hell” love (“Canadian Girl”), there’s the “I’ve spent so long being your friend that I’m fucking tired so I wish were in love” love (“Seven Years of Holidays”), and a different kind for every song.  None of these loves are physical, except in “Red Moon”, where the “you’re beatiful” line still feels more like an emotional thing than lust.

This album really could be considered a concept album, in that I can imagine that every song here can be sung on some old riverboat going gently down the Mississippi River, just with different characters with different histories on each song.  This goes beyond just maturity, it’s world-weariness that’s downright charming and enrapturing.  I mean, all of these lyrics (and this is a mark of incredibly well-developed songwriting) could be just read as a poem and still be understood and appreciated.  In “Postcards From Tiny Islands”, lead singer Hamilton Leithauser croons: “I’ll be drunk before too long/And I’ll keep up this sappy talk/This letter does it all/It’s too much to enclose/These postcards from tiny islands/do more than you know.”  Leithauser is best known for having the most Dylan-esque voice around, if a little raspier and higher, but throughout the album he takes the similarities a bit further, adding Dylanesque sentimentality to his bag of tricks, while keeping the songwriting a little less verbose, a little more “read-between-the-lines”.

On a purely musical level, this album doesn’t really have any flaws, and isn’t all that ostentatious.  The drums from Matt Barrick are totally solid, but not spectacular like on previous records, but that’s more than tolerable; this isn’t as drum-centric as 2004’s great Bows & Arrows was, but as Drowned in Sound, the only journalistic review I could find already published, says, “The musicianship is almost routine in its excellence; Matt Barrick’s drums in particular kick and roll throughout, propelling the songs with a sick-at-sea feel…”

The classic Walkmen sound is back, with lots of space in the music for echoes (not reverb) from the guitar and the cymbal crashes.  But the difference here is that unlike previous albums, either with the keyboard in their first two or the brass band in A Hundred Miles Off, the four key rock components (vocals, guitar, bass, drums) are the only primary sounds on the album.  A couple trumpet flourishes aside (most notably, and beautifully, in “Red Moon”), this is a self-contained effort, and I think the album benefits from it.  These songs don’t need a keyboard to make them better; they’re great as is.

Individual highlights, while hard to pick out since really, every song is great, are probably these: “Red Moon”‘s slow, slow waltz is absolutely sublime, and “Canadian Girl”, which follows it, shows Leithauser channeling Motown with his “ahh-ah-ahh’s”, and flexing a bit of versatility.  “On The Water” is the most aggressive song on the album, but it still manages to keep some benign influence to prevent it from being just another repeat of their breakthrough single “The Rat” from back in ’04.

Well, 2008, you don’t seem to be done cranking out the great music, but you’ve still got a lot of work to do if you want to surpass ’07.  If TV On The Radio matures like the Walkmen have in their third effort, that should make it a lot easier.

A movie review will probably come tomorrow.