The Walkmen are back and “better than we were before”
A 13-year-old’s disgusted wince following a gulp of a heavenly beer is all the proof you need that the best things in life are an acquired taste. The Walkmen are not a band who stroll onto your aural palate with ease, there is a complexity to their unique sound that needs the proper lighting, so to speak, to fully reveal its splendour, but once their brooding beats roll in through the window on the right breeze, you’ll cherish them as one the greatest fucking bands of all time.
In the decade that has followed their last shows, a swathe of new fans have fortuitously befallen that blessed breeze, and the ranks of Walkmen aficionados are bolstered, reinvigorated and ready to catch them on tour as though they manifested the concerts through some purported new age bullshit. The band’s frontman, Hamilton Leithauser, tells me the group feel no different from these eager fans: “I’m excited to get going again.”
When the first batch of the latest shows were initially announced, Leithauser explained that they weren’t sure how far ‘going again’ would take them: “We’re only playing through October, and then we’re going to stop. We’re not going to announce a million more shows. But when we started doing it, I had no idea that we were going to be doing this many, and that we were going to sell so many tickets, and that there was going to be such a younger, new crowd.”
“It’s funny, my friend’s kids are talking about it, they’re like, 20-year-old kids in New York,” he says with a smile. “And their friends were going to the show. And they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ve never saw The Walkmen’.” Wryly reflecting on this influx of pubescent faces, he adds: “You know, it’s so funny that I used to have people say to me, ‘Oh man, I’ve loved you guys since I was in seventh grade.’ And I was like, wow, we’ve been around a while. Now, people are like, ‘Yeah, I never even saw you play because I wasn’t born yet’.”
The fact that the band are able to enamour a legion of young fans in an era where guitar music’s prominence has declined is a testimony to the singular sound that they offer. Many iconic acts from the zeitgeist that spawned The Walkmen have seen their status eroded by the sands of time as the buzz dampens around them, but the potent originality of the energy that Hamilton and the band offered continues to find fresh ears. In part, this is because even at the time, they seemed to stand aside trends and conflated a weirder range of influences and sounds, like the Television of the ’00s.
This delights Leithauser, he exclaims: “Thanks! I’m sure everybody would like to think that about themselves, and have that said. But yeah, we just did.” Analysing their singularity further, he explains: “We never felt like we were part of any particular scene or gang. We always felt like we were on our own.” This gave them a timeless appeal like their pals in The Strokes and the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, who they’ll be united on the bill with at London’s All Points East festival this summer.
Alas, it’s been a long time since they rubbed shoulders with their old New York cohorts, and given the hiatus, it is somewhat of a mystery to ponder about what fans can expect. “We’re better,” Leithauser asserts. “We’re better than we were before. I can say that confidently. Way better. Everybody’s got a better feel. And we’re a little less disorganised. We’re still sort of disorganised but we used to be so disorganised. It used to seem like something was wrong, because I guess it was. But now we’re a little more competent getting things together, and it makes it a lot better.”
Leithauser himself is also coming off the back of perhaps the most revered musical residency of recent times at Brooklyn’s Café Carlyle, which was described by everyone from Alex Turner to Ethan Hawke as one of the best shows they had ever seen. When I ask whether giving up this praised perch added more pressure to the reunion, he bats it away as though it never even crossed his mind. “It feels like no pressure,” he explains.
Continuing, he adds: “To me, it’s like riding a bike. I was just back playing with my friends. At first, I guess I didn’t know what we were going to be like; none of us did, and we were wondering what were even going to sound like. But as soon as we rehearsed before the first show, I wasn’t nervous at all. I just know how to do this. I’ve played those songs so many times that it was muscle memory. I know them all like the back of my hand. So it’s kind of just… like fun.”
The years have brought a new smoothness to their shows; he says that their old issue/quirk of having the tempo spiral out of control is long gone, equipment seems to randomly break far less frequently, and they’re all so seamless they can focus more of their energy into the fun side of things. Over the interim years, they’ve learnt a lot of lessons from the emerging bands around them, and that has added to their rediscovered form. “I’ve done a lot of touring since. I’ve seen a lot of people play,” he tells me.
“I played with a lot of younger bands, Lucy Dacus, I got to be friends with her. That was fun. I sang with Lana Del Rey. That was fun. I like her music. I played with Rostam a bunch. He’s my friend. I’ve seen a lot of bands at festivals that I like. I always play with all the guys in the Fleet Foxes. They’re all my good friends,” he recalls. And he has keenly observed lessons from each of these modern influences.
However, mostly, this tour is not about showcasing anything other than the thrill of being in The Walkmen. Speaking about how the reunion came about, Leithauser explains: “They’re my best friends. There have been years where we’ve been out of touch because everyone has been so busy. Then maybe a couple of years ago, we had some business stuff we had to talk about. We had a Zoom call, and it was just so funny to see everybody’s faces. I hadn’t seen that group in so long. Everyone looked a little bit older. But it was like the same thing. It was all sort of disorganised, nobody had any idea what the business thing actually was. But that was maybe what started it, just that old feeling of the five of us talking, telling each other stupid jokes.”
This memory lane energy transmutes through the shows themselves. While some groups feel like a cover band playing old hits, by the sounds of it, The Walkmen have never been more comfortable with their back catalogue. “Well, actually, I used to have that problem,” Leithauser explains. “Towards the end of the first run of the band, I couldn’t stand playing the older songs. And that was an indication that maybe it was time to take a break. Now, I don’t mind it because maybe I have so much separation from the younger ones.”
Nevertheless, he adds: “It does feel funny to sing songs and words that I wrote when I was like 22 because I’m 45 now. So, sometimes they seem kind of silly to me or something, but I find that they have their own charm and time of place, and I can appreciate that.” With a grin, he adds, “Yeah, we play the hits.”
Alas, it is a mark of the band that I feel many of the young fans seeing them for the first time aren’t there in a hark back to any hits; they’ve crafted a far more alluring oeuvre than that. It is one that rattles with rarified energy, a freeform flow of jazz, the rattle of the garage, and solid waltzing hooks of soul. It is a buzz that carries an aura of coolness, a cinematic severance from prosaic sameness, which is perhaps why Martin McDonagh has deployed the band so often in the soundtracks to his masterful films of late. This has helped to expose The Walkmen to more fans, and that influence isn’t lost on Leithauser either. “Martin is a friend of mine,” he tells me. “A good friend. He’s great, he’s been very helpful to us.”
While the band currently don’t have any plans for new Walkmen material – even though Leithauser says he isn’t against the idea – and once the tour is over, they’re off to continue solo projects. It seems apparent from his demeanour that the thrill of the recent shows might dispel thoughts of another decade-long hiatus. As he enthuses in conclusion ahead of the forthcoming UK shows: “I’m excited to get going again, to be honest. We’ve had this big break. We played in Copenhagen, and it was awesome. And then suddenly, we’ve had months off. I just want to get rolling again.” And roll they will, and it will be beautiful.
