Walkmen: Heaven

On "The Love You Love," drummer Matt Barrick hammers out a racing beat while while one of the guitarists strums away heedlessly, and vocalist Hamilton Leithauser wails away to the heavens: "Baby it's the love you love / Baby it's the love you loooooove / Not me." This is an objectively upsetting thing to have to say, but it's delivered with such affirmation, such a good, clean feeling, you enjoy it. They have a sound that sounds so familiar and yet owns it so distinctly. Those guitars are so clean, even when they're ragged. Leithauser's vocals are so pure, even when you can hear his throat straining. It's that balance of sweet and sour that makes so much of this album irresistible to me. The determined way he sings the chorus to "Song For Leigh," with the music forming a brick wall to help him stand his ground, is one of the best individual songs I've heard all year.

Leithauser has a very strong voice. He carries half of "We Can't Be Beat" almost totally on his own, with a bit of light backup. That's as much a triumph of construction as talent, since the moment the rest of the band really kicks in is like a breakthrough. The album is loaded with deftly-executed vocal hooks, and besides those crystal-clear-picked guitars, there is also the twangy "Love Is Luck" and the skittering, ringing "Nightingales." "The Witch" is led by an appropriately haunting organ. The instruments seem supernatural while the vocals are very Earthly. It's a good mix.

In my review of Of Monsters & Men, I mentioned Mumford & Sons, not to compare the two but to point out that the latter's popularity has made the terrain safe for a certain type of act. The Walkmen don't quite carry that twangy, country folksiness (nor OM&M's Icelandic spiritual nature) but their hopeful, good-natured, indeed Heavenly sound plays very much to the same audience. This is good honest music and a great piece of work.

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