Album Review - The Walkmen: Heaven

The Walkmen
Heaven
Rating: Grrrr

Maturity seems to be a evil word when it comes to music. No one wants to give up on their youth, but at some point there has to be a change. Bands in their teens and early 20s that started out spewing piss and vinegar seem silly and anachronistic attempting the same 10-20 years down the road. It doesn't mean you have to put on a suit and start singing about carpools and play dates, but it does mean you have to evolve in some way. Over ten years, The Walkmen began as a hard drinking NY rock band looking for good times 24/7 on Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone, evolving to jaded party goers on “The Rat,” from 2004’s Bows + Arrows, before settling into a more reflective era on You & Me and Lisbon. This gradual movement sort of reaches its apex on Heaven, perhaps their most consistent and, well, mature record yet. While The Walkmen have been more of a singles act for me (their previous albums never did much for me as a whole), but with Heaven they have stuck to a theme and are better for it. As The Talking Heads once sang about Heaven, "it's a place where nothing ever happens," and for Hamilton Leithauser and Co., this is not necessarily a bad thing. The songs on Heaven deal with the joys of family, stability of relationships, and how perspectives and goals change over time. Not that this album is a sunny walk in the park; frequently these realizations are hard fought and won, and it is always a struggle to keep them. Heaven is album about that struggle and how sometimes you come to late to those realizations and are left with nothing.

"We Can't Be Beat," opens the album on pensive note, as Leithauser sings over gentle guitars: "Golden dreams, all lose their glow/I don't need perfection/I love the whole," realizing that while the grass is always greener, you will get more out of appreciating what you have.



On "Heartbreaker" his player days are over, finding it hard to convince his love that he's ready to settle down.



The album primarily floats along on tender ballads and mid-tempo numbers, keeping a mood of contentment and sometimes pained resignation.

On album closer "Dreamboat" Leithauser is the aging Lothario who is at the point where he no longer can woo other women and realizes he's lost the love of his life for good, singing: "I left you, a million times/The Irony, ain't lost on me."



"Line By Line" favors age and experience over youthful exuberance: "Oh I've seen how this whole thing ends/The honest man survives/How do we know it?/I just know it."



And on "Southern Heart," the haunting acoustic centerpiece to Heaven, the pull between past and present is almost too much to bear.



The reliance on so many low-key tracks tends to make the transitions to more upbeat tracks that more jarring, and there are stretches of the album where you wish the pace would pick up. Indeed, the middle of the record can get particularly bogged down until things get going again with the rollicking "The Love You Love," where Leithauser chastises his lover for focusing too much on the surface of things, screaming at her "Baby it's the love you love/Not me."



Wonderful single and title track "Heaven" features sunny, ringing guitars pushed along by a forceful rhythm section, Leithauser fighting for the life he's built, imploring his lover "remember remember/all we fight for."



Heaven is not an immediate album; the languid pace of many of the tracks initially makes it difficult to truly get into the album, but, over time and several listens, you learn to let the pace dictate where the record goes, and like many of the themes on the record, appreciate what you are given. Initially, I thought Heaven to be too mature and too stately, but once you dig deep into the lyrics and themes, you find a darker spirit there. The epiphanies, while earned, sometimes come at a price. It is never a bad thing to dream and to chase those dreams, but you also have to have the guts sometimes to step back and truly accept what your life is, and appreciate it for what it is worth.

Rating Scale:

Chilfos: masterpiece; coolest thing I've heard in ages.

Woof Daddy: excellent; just a hair away from being a masterpiece.

Grrrr: very good; will definitely be considered for my top releases of the year.

Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It: good; definitely invites further listens and piques one's interest for more material.

Meh: not horrible, but certainly not great; could have either been polished, trimmed, or re-thought.

Jeez Lady: what the hell happened? Just plain bad. They should hang their heads in shame and be forced to listen to Lady Gaga ad nauseam as penance.

Tragicistani: so bad, armed villagers with pitchforks and torches should run the artist out of the country for inflicting this abomination on the human race.