The Walkmen
Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone

THE REVIEW

Sometimes I feel patriotic, but then it passes. When I was in New York, the only thing I remember is a tachycardia-inducing lightning storm. The new world was too much, and that city was very neurotic, or maybe it was just me feeling lonely.

Sometimes I think Americans are all criminals, but then it passes. This cover inevitably reminds me of Sergio Leone. Three good guys taking a break. Don't be fooled by the sepia, this was taken in the province of Catanzaro. Or maybe they're really three good guys from Brooklyn. Or maybe not because the Walkmen were born, raised, and grew up in Washington DC. Then they moved to New York, and I wonder why they did it. Maybe they liked the neurosis, or maybe they felt lonely and needed to tell it to a broader audience.

Some songs give me the feeling that it's snowing outside, but then it passes. We been had even if I listened to it in July, nothing, it's snowing. It's here that the pilot...ehm, I meant to say singer Hamilton tells us with a contortionism that in Washington, they understood nothing. The first verse is enough. Unfortunately, in the second, he doesn't reveal whether with a '60s hairstyle you can pick up in Manhattan.

Eventually, everything passes, especially the people who pretended. That's why you surround yourself with enemies. At least if they stab you, they do it in front of everyone. This seems a bit like the message given by the album title. I like to think then that the Walkmen are criminals, friends of many. But what kind of year was 2002 for New York? Interpol, Strokes, and them, from Washington DC. More subdued but sly in their own way, more noise and experimental. With what a tilted keyboard can do, sending slashes or caresses. I care little if in subsequent albums they won’t shift the sound coordinates, when post-punk manages to blend with lullabies under acid, for me, the stylistic code is that of giants. Hamilton imitates a drunk dragging his words, pretending to sing clumsily.

Forever I tell myself that I will not understand this record. Because for me, it marks the tragedy of the limits of age, ears, neural connections. It's so beautiful it hides from my understanding. But one day, with new ears and different eyes, I'll return to listen to it, and I'll begin to feel that this is my desert island record, with lots of snow and not even one enemy to count on.