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Although only a fool could really believe that the
tender, dishevelled magic of Walter Martin’s muffled
turn-of-the-century piano tinklings on the band’s ‘We’ve
Been Had’ came together by anything other than design,
The Walkmen’s Hamilton Leithauser refuses point
blank to be coerced into disclosing any such artifice.
Not even on the subject of Matt Barrick’s crazy and
non-uniform drumming style:
“We didn't have a sound in mind at all. We just knew
we didn't want to sound like our old bands. There wasn't
any thought. I found the album cover months after we
finished it. The drums are crazy because Matt is crazy.”
And whilst it seems natural to assume otherwise, one
look at the lyric-sheet dryly corroborates Hamilton’s
own take on events more than it does our own. Tales
of dislocation, independence and causality pepper each
clumsy unfolding narrative. On the one hand it’s all
naturally unconventional and unintentional and on the
other, it’s anything but. Genius was never meant to
be this uncertain, surely?
 First
album ‘Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone’
was conceived exclusively in the studio. Those of us
with the benefit of hindsight would swear blind to this
being obvious. Its delicateness, its tortuousness and
its gentle but enduring obstinacy – no collection of
songs conceived in front of the crowd was ever likely
to have been this cantankerous or idiosyncratic. And
certainly not in front of a crowd of the kind that exists
today, a crowd reared on every rehash known to man,
on every retro device you could apply. So does the protracted
bluster and dishonesty of bands like The Strokes
piss him off? Not likely. Not Hamilton:
“Yeah well that's always a problem so you can't let
it piss you off because then you'll always have to be
pissed off.”
Issue closed.
All five members of the Walkmen were born in the 1970s
and spent their childhoods in Washington, DC. Hamilton
Leithauser and organist Walter Martin are first
cousins and grew up across the street from one another.
All but bass player Peter Bauer went to the same
high school. Each listened to many of the same bands,
went to the same shows and hung out in the same places
handed down from generation to generation.
One by one, each member moved to New York with the
sole purpose of playing in a band. Paul, Matt and Walter
started a group called Jonathan Fire*Eater
with two other friends from Washington:
”The Walkmen got together in the spring of 2000,
but this wasn’t where it started. Before The Walkmen
I'd been playing in another band called Jonathan
Fire*Eater for about 6 years and going to college
in NY. The other guys were in another band together
for about the same amount of time: The Recoys.
They'd dropped out of college, but were heading back
when Jonathan Fire*Eater was forming.”
Before they did head back, however, the two bands eventually
got to play the Bowery Ballroom together one evening
in late 1998. Not long after that show both bands split
up. But there was no way it was going to be for long.
All they needed was little help from their friends and
a little ‘studio trickery’. Hamilton takes up the story:
“The three older guys in the group (Paul Bauer – Bass,
Matt Barrick – Drums and Walt Martin - Organ) got the
idea of a studio long before The Walkmen even
started, because they knew they wanted to keep playing
music but they weren't that sure what they wanted to
do exactly...so the studio seemed like a solid starting
point. So they got all these gullible friends to lend
them money, which to this day is still accruing interest.”
Situated in Harlem and several floors below a police
station in a large converted industrial space, the newly
named Marcata studio was destined become a home for
the future band, and it was here that first album, ‘Everyone
Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone’ fell together.
Not that either Hamilton, Matt or Walter had a clue
as to where any of this was going, let alone a well
defined idea of the sound that they were after:
“We didn't have a sound in mind at all. We just knew
we didn't want to sound like our old bands. So we really
wrote the songs while we recorded them. We had all the
time in the world in our studio...no paying by the hour...so
we really messed with the sounds until we got something
we liked. So we just didn't play a show until we had
enough of these songs to fill a set.”
In March 2002, The Walkmen released ‘Everyone Who Pretended
To Like Me Is Gone’. It pleased the critics immensely,
but for the most part it eluded the masses.
 By
late 2003, the band had travelled as far as Scotland
and Greece, culminating with a show in front of 2,500
people in the pouring rain on a New York pier. And around
this time, they had also begun recording the second
album. But their confidence and eagerness live was somehow
reshaping them as writers, as blistering new tracks
like ‘The Rat’ reveal. The emotion is
still there; it’s just played at a higher volume and
with greater and firmer intensity. And the same
is true of the singing. Is Hamilton sounding more like
himself?
“We hadn't played live the first time around...and
that's clear when you see us play those songs live,
so this one really captures our live sound. I think
I sound more like myself now because even though I've
been singing in bands for like 10 years, before The
Walkmen came along I never actually sang notes...it
was more just screaming...so when we did that first
record ‘Everyone…’ well I just got sort of ‘singerly’
because I could actually hit the notes. So then I sort
of lost track of the personality behind it a little.
So this time I stopped thinking about trying to be a
‘singerly’ singer and just sang it more relaxed and
natural.”
Recalling the endless hours spent on the first one,
experimenting and redoing things that, perhaps, had
not needed to be redone, the band worried they might
have grown too comfortable at Marcata. By working elsewhere
and setting down all the songs to tape at once, they
hoped to expedite the recording process
“We thought we'd be able make the record quickly, just
crank it out,” guitarist Paul Maroon says, “but we were
dead wrong.”
In the end much of the new album, Bows and Arrows
proved to be just as intensive as the last record. While
the germ for many of the songs formed while the band
lived in a farmhouse near Saugerties, NY, they headed
south to Memphis, TN's Easley-McCain Recording
(where great albums by Sonic Youth, The Breeders
and countless others were produced) to record. While
the first session went smoothly, a second was interrupted
by storms that blacked out the Memphis power grid for
over a week (they would also be stalled by another black
out in New York during mixing). The result? A bit of
a creative slowdown:
“It was pretty slow going at first, then it really
got moving right at the end. Our writing always starts
at just a brick wall. We're at one right now. We can't
write a thing - not one thing and it's really irritating.
We just sit in a room and come up with the worst stuff
over and over. But when you finish one record it's difficult
to start on a new foot with the next one.”
Was ‘Bows and Arrows’ as entirely ‘closed-shop’ a recording
as the first, was or was there a little help from their
friends this time around?
“A guy from Dallas named Stuart Sikes who’d
worked with The White Stripes and the The
Box Tops came to help with the engineering. He was
cool. Otherwise we did it all by ourselves. Oh wait,
that's not true, we had David Sardy (producer
to Marilyn Manson and System Of A Down)
help us with ‘The Rat’.”
By the time all was completed, the record had travelled
from Tennessee to Mississippi and back to New Jersey
and Marcata in New York, where, against most odds, the
work was completed. And were they any surprises on hearing
the finished article?
“I was surprised with how much I liked the final versions
of the last two songs (‘Thinking Of A Dream I Had’ and
title track ‘Bows and Arrows’) because we really wrote
them while we were in the studio, and the final takes
of the basic tracks were done before any of the vocals
were written or anything, so when I realized I'd have
to finish them off right there it got a little harrowing,
because I didn't know what to do. So I was really flying
by the seat of my pants on those, and now I think they're
my favourite songs.”
As Crud hasn’t yet heard the album we can’t comment,
but if it’s anything like the first, there’s more than
Hamilton Leithauser set to experience those same surprises.
Tour dates:
2/13 - Portland, OR - Berbati's Pan
2/14 - Orangevale, CA - The Boardwalk
2/15 - San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall
2/16 - Palo Alto, CA - The Edge
2/19 - Pomona, CA - Glass House
2/20 - San Diego, CA - The Casbah
2/21 - Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre
2/26 - Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
2/27 - Cambridge, MA - Middle East Club
2/28 - Philadelphia, PA - The Khyber
3/3 - Toronto, ON - Horseshoe Tavern
3/4 - East Lansing, MI - Michigan St. University
3/5 - Cleveland, OH - Grog Shop
3/6 - Detroit, MI - Magic Stick
3/7 - Milwaukee, WI - Mad Planet
3/8 - Minneapolis, MN - 400 Bar
3/10 - Champaign, IL - High Dive
3/11 - Chicago, IL - Metro / Smart Bar
3/12 - Iowa City, IA - Gabe's Oasis
3/13 - Columbia, MO - Mojo's
3/14 - Norman, OK - Opolis
3/15 - Denton, TX - Hailey's
3/16 - Houston, TX - Fat Cat's (formerly Mary Jane's)
3/22 - Atlanta, GA - Echo Lounge
3/23 - Athens, GA - 40 Watt Club
3/24 - Carrboro, NC - Go! Rehearsal Studio
4/1 - New York, NY - Irving Plaza
Relvant sites:
www.marcata.net/walkmen
Alan Sargeant for Crud Magazine 2003©
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