The Walkmen

The Walkmen are a band from New York/Philadelphia that came out as a response to the New Wave genre that the Strokes kind of invented. The bands relevance may come into question, because they just announced that they won't be playing any more shows together, however not many of the bands in my blog are still together anyways. As other bands I've mentioned in this blog, the Walkmen took an 80's punk influence and integrated blues, old folk and soul into it. This band's unique sound comes from its inclusion of an organ piano and the distinct guitar that the guitarist uses. As I've listened to them over a pretty long time period, with each new albums comes a more evolved sound. At first their band was very comparable to other new-wave garage-punk bands, but they've always had a different twist -- enhanced by their piano use. Anyways, their sound moved from that to more orchestral with the use of a brass section, to more folky songs. Right now, their latest album incorporates all of those styles of music together and I think they've been listening to Roy Orbison. They both have some beautiful orchestra in their songs. I mentioned Bobby Dylan earlier, and the Walkmen's singer, Hamilton Leithauser, sounds a little like him sometimes. He's got a good voice, and really knows how to screech n yowl. The band has such a wide array of songs, that anyone and everyone is bound to like something they've put out. Sometimes their songs follow odd song structures which, makes their music that much more memorable and original. Their odd sound structure songs remind me of Roy Orbison's, where the beginning of the song is kinda slow and it builds up to a beautiful end with a big wall of sound. Below are some of my favorite songs. They're arranged from their earliest sound to their later sound and they best portray the Walkmen's evolution as a band in general. "On the Water" is an example of a beautiful song with a strange structure that starts slow and builds up to an orchestral-gasmic finish. This song reminds me of Roy Orbison's "Running Scared", which is posted last.