(Fat Possum)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Read my Metro Times review.
This is right on the edge of being just "recommended" but I bumped it up because I truly feel that if a change so minor as the songs being in a different order had been made, I wouldn't have been so underwhelmed -- and after spending the summer with the thing, I find myself reaching for it with considerable affection. More specific justification follows.
Cons: sounds like a series of leftovers, sounds vaguely unfinished (it appeared so suspiciously fast!), a little treacly in areas (though I really love "Song for Leigh" which is the one everyone's singled out). Has a bit of an early U2 thing going? Or Dire Straits or uh, Springsteen. Sounds really weak and nimble when played against basically any of their prior canonical albums -- even A Hundred Miles Off, which I stand by as a mystifying underrated record -- especially so soon after Lisbon. Pacing is bizarre, sounds like someone reversed it at the factory or something.
Pros: guitars have never sounded better. Band has never sounded better. Hamilton has never sounded better. The songs are solid. And when I think about it, it's the mesmerizing sound that I love about the Walkmen and I dig this album for the sheer fact of adding more and increasingly adventurous and weirdly arranged tunes (they've discovered 1950s country, it seems) to their canon. Sounds absolutely wonderful while driving at night. Has a bit of an early U2 thing going? Or uh, Van Morrison circa Tupelo Honey. The songs with "love" in the title are two of the best songs with "love" in the title that I've heard lately.
[SEE ALSO:]
Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone (2002)
You & Me (2008)
Lisbon (2010)
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