The Walkmen
Lisbon

Wakefulness: the state between sleep and wakefulness, no longer reality but not yet unconsciousness. This faint fracture is the dimension of the Walkmen, it seems possible to grasp the melodies and yet they use other staves.
An underrated band, rightfully in the history of alternative music, that still embodies the ideal of an independent band, doing whatever the hell they want and aligning with whatever pleases them, far from reality but never too close to the dream. The Walkmen are above all, at least for the writer, a group with one of the most astonishing voices of creation: the powerful and helpless, tragicomic lament of Hamilton Leithauser.

There's room for a bit of everything in this fifth album from the NYC ensemble. There is more gentleness and a certain composure in execution. Hamilton disarms like never before, and with him, the songs gain unprecedented depth: the spirals of “Blue As Your Blood” and “All My Great Designs,” for instance. There’s the cyclopean solidity of Matt Barrick on drums, one of the very few capable of unleashing such vitality; just listen to the hysterical carnival march of “Angela Surf City”. There's a song that encapsulates all the mastery of the New York group, the best of the lot and one of my all-time favorite songs: “Juveniles,” the opening track. No need to worry, we are at the beginning, time adopts its own conception in this album and expands at will, we take it easy while savoring the dreamlike menu: the anesthetized soul of “Torch Song,” the gypsy surfing of “Woe Is Me,” the playful ballad of “Stranded,” the convulsions of the eyeball of our 20 minutes of r.e.m. phases: “Victory.”  At the end, Hamilton and the delays of the guitars lull us towards the sweetest phase of sleep, when as children we would run into mom and dad's bed, there we would sleep safely, sheltered from the monsters lurking in the dark: “While I Shovel The Snow” and the title track are ambrosia for our lost souls.

One adjective: phenomenal. An album not for every day, not for every mood, but certainly for those able to let go and immerse themselves in the music.