 |
|
||||||||||
|
THE WALKMEN - BIO >> You & Me
The music that inspired the Walkmen to compose You and Me follows in a tradition of song writing that goes back to early rock 'n' roll: the intimacy and energy of Elvis Presley's and Buddy Holly's early recordings, and the massive voice and orchestration of Roy Orbison. And it carries on through people like Bob Marley and Randy Newman and on to bands like The Pogues and The Modern Lovers - the sort of songs that are very much a product of their time and place while firmly rooted in tradition. The vocals were performed live right in the room with the full band, and sometimes a horn section too. With some romance and drama, You and Me harnesses a sense of classic live-band production into meticulously constructed, unique-sounding rock songs. The sound would definitely not be mistaken for old, but it would be impossible to ignore the most timeless influences. You and Me offers a distinctive twist to the“Walkmen” sound of their first three records. Each song shows focus, and an up-beat enthusiasm apparent in all lyrics, music, and performances. It is a long record, clocking in at just under an hour, and it presents a wide range of ideas. The pacing is very important, as the band felt it was essential to set the right tone, and show each song in its proper light. Writing and recording of You and Me happened over a vibrant and rigorous 2-year period, during which the members of The Walkmen were split between Philadelphia and New York. The band rode China Town busses five days a week to work in two small rehearsal spaces (an old nightclub in Chelsea, New York and a warehouse in Fish Town, Philadelphia) to freeze by the kerosene heater in the winter, and sweat it out in the summer. By the time of the record’s pressing there were over four hundred cast-off 8-track tapes littering both spaces. The song I Lost You was the first major breakthrough, and inspired many songs to follow. Maroon was teaching himself the viola and trumpet at the time, and the song was the culmination of many 8-track experiments. The new warmth and romance in the music seemed to beg for the same from the lyrics, so the cold and stand-offish tone that had run a-ground in recent years was abandoned for a more personal and real approach. I Lost You’ s strange pacing, and the way in which both the music and the lyrics together pushed towards an Orbison-like crescendo, was the new direction everyone had hoped for. Songs like Red Moon, On the Water, If Only it Were True, and In the New Year were soon to follow. The album was recorded in two installments - the first at Sweet Tea studios in Oxford, Mississippi (where they had worked on Bows and Arrows) with engineer John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr., Hold Steady, Sonic Youth) and in a couple of sessions in New York's Gigantic Studios (built by Phillip Glass) with engineer Chris Zane (who the boys consider "the best f@#king engineer in the world" and a "f@#king god-send"). You and Me is a solid and complex showcase of inspired songwriting. Romantic and celebratory, this is the sound of The Walkmen returning to classic form.
>> "A Hundred Miles Off" The guitars start at a lilt, and the gritty croon of vocalist Hamilton Leithauser is unmistakable: you know you're listening to the Walkmen. And by the time "Louisiana" ends, in an increasingly insistent sonic carnival of trumpet, piano and an almost-Caribbean beat, you also know the band has raised the stakes. A HUNDRED MILES OFF, the Walkmen's third record, and the eagerly awaited follow-up to 2004's Bows and Arrows, is also the band's best work to date. The (mostly) New York City five-piece-Leithauser, Walter Martin, Peter Bauer, Matt Barrick and Paul Maroon-crafted A HUNDRED MILES OFF with their usual patience and perfectionism, discarding songs, swapping out the instruments each member played and finally, leaving their own Marcata Studio to get it right. "A lot of stuff just didn't sound new to us," says Leithauser. "You keep trying until it sounds new. Then you've finally got 12 songs you like, and that's your record." Packed with rockers, hymns and richly textured pop, with both wedding songs and drinking songs, A HUNDRED MILES OFF stakes out fresh and colorful new ground while retaining both a certain familiar fragile dynamism and the unabashed electric power of the Walkmen's breakout song "The Rat." The Walkmen became a band around 2000, but their history together goes back several decades. Leithauser and Martin are first cousins who grew up on the same street; four of the band's five members went to the same Washington, D.C.-area high school. In the mid to late '90s Leithauser and Bauer were in the Recoys, while Martin, Barrick and Maroon were three-fifths of Jonathan Fire*Eater. After JF*E broke up the trio began assembling Marcata, which shares a pre-Depression-era building with, among other things, a Harlem NYPD precinct; the Walkmen coalesced around the studio and released its first CD, Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone, in 2002. Then came Bows and Arrows, which debuted at No. 8 on Billboard's Heatseekers chart and was one of the most acclaimed records of that year. "Their confidence is overwhelming… a triumphant album,' Pitchfork's Eric Carr raved in a 9.2 review. "A band that's grown tighter, hungrier, and more varied," said David Browne of Entertainment Weekly, who put the record on his 2004 Top 10. Many months of touring followed; to kill time on the road the band began work on, of all things, a collective novel called John's Journey. They appeared twice on the David Letterman show and performed on the hit TV series The O.C. Of course the road, and all the other bells and whistles of success, took the band away from what it likes the most-writing and recording. "It takes you a while to get back into the groove of writing songs," Leithauser says. This time around, the band did a lot of composing on their own, in part because of geographic separation-Maroon and Barrick both now make their home in Philadelphia. Working on piano and guitar, Maroon demoed in his home studio; Leithauser and Martin worked at Marcata, though they usually ignored the high-tech gear and stuck to four-track. "Yeah, we'd go into this huge studio and work in a tiny, tiny room," Martin says. "It's the size of a closet: a drum set, a guitar amp and two people." When the whole band did gather in Harlem, the sessions simply weren't happening. They needed the discipline of being somewhere on a schedule, and, especially, a pair of outside ears to run the tape machine. Enter Don Zientera, the engineer at Inner Ear in Arlington, VA. Leithauser had interned at the studio when he was still in high school; nearly every big D.C. band has recorded there, including Bad Brains, Fugazi and Nation of Ulysses. The Walkmen still served as their own producers; Zientera allowed them to focus on their sound and their performance without getting caught up in technical details. He was also a good fit aesthetically. "Most of the stuff we've done is very live and straight, without effects or anything, and Don's great at that," says Martin. "Plus, we could stay at our parent's houses while we were there." The Walkmen's longtime familiarity with each other "makes it easier and harder," says Leithauser. "Sometimes there's no surprises in our styles, but in the end it's better because you've got a feel for everybody's playing." Nevertheless, one thing that got the record going was a major change within the band-Martin, who had previously played organs, switched instruments with bassist Bauer. "I thought it'd be a really fun change for both of us," says Martin. Live, it's opened up a lot of possibilities; in the past, Martin would play the organ and Maroon would either play piano or guitar; now, Bauer primarily plays piano and organs, as well as gourd and lap steel while Barrick remains behind the drums. Leithauser says once they finally had one song they were happy with, the rest of the album flowed, and on A HUNDRED MILES OFF that song was the insinuating, martial, "Don't Get Me Down (Come on over Here)" "It had a vibe for us," he says. "It's not immediately-hard hitting, it's a slow builder, but I think it has the longest replayability." Other highlights include "Emma, Get Me a Lemon," with its dreamily insistent guitar hooks and percussive patter, the charming "Another One Goes By," which is actually a cover (it was written by a friend--Quentin Stoltzfus of Mazarin) and "Louisiana," which, before anyone asks, was written pre-Katrina. Other highlights include the rock-solid bass-and-drum foundation of "Danny's At The Wedding," and the swing-meets-Leonard Cohen shanty "All Hands and the Cook," which Martin highlights as his favorite. "That might be because it was one of the last ones written," he says. "I think it sounds like our next record will sound." Actually, the Walkmen's next record is already in the can: it's a cover of a covers album, Harry Nilsson's Pussycats, that the band recorded quickly as a farewell to Marcata (the studio is closing, thanks to new landlord Columbia University's plans for the building). But that's a subject for another time. In the here and now, A HUNDRED MILES OFF is all the Walkmen anyone could need-the sound of a great young rock'n'roll group. "A Hundred Miles Off...is the Walkmen's best yet"- ELLE "The Walkmen's third full-length proves this is a band for the ages. Joining a post-motorcycle-crash Dylan vocal delivery with a Springsteenian of-the-streets spirit, whiskey-soaked singer Hamilton Leithauser leads his band through a set of rousing, sharply focused, late-night pleas and barroom romps that take the group well beyond its garage roots."- BILLBOARD "Opener 'Louisiana' imagines Bob Dylan fronting the Velvet Underground..."- TIME OUT NY "NYC's finest deliver superb performances...tight as hell"- WIRED
>> Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone" (Talitres / StarTime, 2002) THE WALKMEN are five friendly New Yorkers who have played rock music diligently since the 5th grade. Now aged 23 to 28, they've performed under their current moniker for a little over a year. All five originally hail from Washington, D.C. where they attended the same high school and played loud music in several bands. Over the years, and in their many ensembles, they've experimented with punk, noise, a lot of "garage" sounds, ska, and some decent rock. Although initial press gave the Walkmen positive reviews, it seemed to focus too much on the former notoriety of three of its members, all of whom played in the much hyped, short-lived JONATHAN FIRE*EATER. This is understandable as the Walkmen had only played a handful of shows before StarTime International released their debut 4-song EP. Touring extensively since its release in June, the boys have made it as far west as Minneapolis, Minnesota, and as far east as London, England. With the release of their debut full length "Everybody Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone", the Walkmen may now be judged strictly on their own merits. After Jonathan Fire*Eater imploded Walter, Matt, and Paul rounded up enough investors to rent a Harlem industrial space, and convert it into a 24-track analog recording studio. Dubbed "Marcata Recording", the new space became the birthplace, home, and virtual sixth member of the Walkmen. Joining with ex-Recoys, Walter's cousin Hamilton and his friend Peter (who had for years been slaving away in the East Village for spots at the Continental and Luna as the Recoys), the lineup was complete by the summer of 2000. Over the course of the next year the band sedulously wrote and recorded late in the evenings after work. It was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. While adjusting to their new space and equipment, the band engaged in much experimentation with sound. Their first show took place at Joe's Pub in the East Village in September of 2000. Onto the tiny stage the band lugged an upright piano, a bass cabinet that was taller than the bass player, three amplifiers, an organ, a lap steel, two tape machines, three guitars, and a set of drums. The show was a great success, so they decided to stick together. Since then the boys have remained dedicated to their instrumentation, and even got their hands on an over-sized, rotting upright in London which nearly ruined the trip (one show was on the third floor). During this time, a few of the most helpful influences included: Bruce Springsteen, the Pogues, the Cure, Bjork, the Smiths, Joy Division, Neil Young, and New Order. But their way is mostly uncharted. The music is not driven by any one instrument, and each recording has its own sound and style. Primarily piano and organ provide the basis for each song, with dashes of a variety of guitars and tapes. The bass holds a steady, booming foundation, and the drums fluctuate from minimal to down right furious. The vocals range from strong and long-held highs to reserved falsettos and lazy lows. The songs can be light and playful, or huge and atmospheric. Under Exclusive Licensed from Startime International, NY. CONTACT Management: Dawn Barger - Promo France, press & radio: Coup Franc 1, bis Cité Paradis 75010 PARIS +33 (0) 1 48 24 24 79 - http://www.coupfranc.net - contact@coupfranc.net Other : http://www.marcata.net/walkmen/contact.htm DISCOGRAPHY
"Let's Live Together" EP - Shingle Street, march 02 "8 songs, vinyl" - Troubleman Unlimited, march 02 "8 songs, vinyl" - Troubleman Unlimited, may 02 "4 songs EP" - StarTime, march 01 "Wake Up" - Arena Rock Compilation "This is next year"
|
"Everyone
Who Pretented To Like Me Is Gone" - Talitres / StarTime, september
02