TLOBF Interview // The Walkmen

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The seething vitriolic track that was 2004’s ‘The Rat’ gave The Walkmen what many people will argue is undeniably the bands best track to date, especially considering it has made it into various ‘top tracks of the decade’ lists. However, The Walkmen have spent the years since then reaching for something more; expanding their sound, maturing and moving on – as others argue fans of only ‘The Rat’ should do.

Their last full-length effort, You & Me, was infused with a more intricate and extravagant array of instrumentation that was nostalgic and beautiful in it’s own gritty and harrowing way. Soon to be released Lisbon, the band’s sixth studio release, continues their exploration into what means to ‘sound like The Walkmen’.

I caught up with frontman Hamilton Leithauer and bassist Peter Bauer to talk about what has inspired them, from their beginnings in The Strokes-era New York scene to the expansive and raw forthcoming record.

TLOBF: So guys how are you doing? How was last night’s show with Avi Buffalo?

Hamilton Leithauser: It was great, I’d never heard of Avi Buffalo before but I really like them.

Peter Bauer: The venue wasn’t too great though, I’m not a fan of the whole Academy thing they’re just a little generic, a little dingy.

Are you excited about playing with Surfer Blood tonight?

HL: I definitely am, they seem like very nice guys. I just heard their stuff for the first time, I mean I’ve only listened once but I really like it.

I think the new album is great by the way, of the 29 tracks that you have recorded over the past year how did decide on the 11 that made the album?

PB: Well a lot of them weren’t any good! Haha, I mean we just knew we wanted to have a short record so it was pretty easy to agree what made the cut.

So the track listing came about quite naturally then?

HL: Yeah, pretty much.

How have the songs evolved from their live incarnation to how they stand now?

PB: Well a couple of them have really changed. The first song on the record started off as this country inspired record when we first played it live.

HL: We mostly stripped stuff out of songs after playing them live, rather than adding to them. That was sort of the theme for the whole thing – just cutting things out.

I know a lot of people are dying to know what’s going to happen to the left over tracks…do you have any plans for them?

PB: All of them will be released as B-Sides through different versions of the record and singles. I think the UK version of the album has 4 different songs on a bonus disc. They will all be spread out in odd ways unfortunately – you would have to buy our record like three times to get all of them.

HL: They will all be out in someway or other. Even if it’s like on a random 7 inch.

PB: We’ve played most of the tracks live over the past few years, and the ones we probably played the most didn’t make the record so that might seem really weird to some people.

In the past the overall composition and flow of an album as a whole concept seems to have been very important to you, so how did you develop the distinct sound of Lisbon over the course of the entire record?

PB: It is important to us to kind of organise a whole record so it flows as an interesting piece. I guess you could say we were trying to make a hit record! Like a popular record instead of a failure! The last record we did, You & Me, we made it very long, almost over long on purpose. We wanted to make that record very long winded and complicated, but this we wanted to be very simple – just 10 songs, nothing extravagant.

HL: It is important to us to make every record sound different from the last; this one is definitely simpler, with a lot less reverb.

PB: It’s less dark sounding I hope.

How is has the response been so far?

HL: It’s not out for a while so we haven’t had that much feedback yet, I hope people will like it though. In the US fans have started to know the songs and it’s always more fun to play them when everyone already knows them. I don’t think anyone knew the songs last night, which was kind of odd because I always thought that once it was on the Internet, it would be everywhere.

PB: In the US it seems like anyone who likes our band probably just stole our record already! We get very excited about playing our new songs, but then when no one knows them we realise that we have to play our old ones. Eventually we will have played the new songs enough so that they will become the old favourites one day.

Did recording at Sun Studio influence the album?

HL: Absolutely. We really tried to get across the sound of that Sun Studio room in Memphis. We used minimal instrumentation to get an honest, raw sound that at least for us was a new and different sound. We’ve been listening to a lot of the original classic recordings that came out of there as well.

PB: We do really well when we go to the south actually. I think the best recordings we have made have been in Mississippi and Dallas – God knows why!

What bands have you guys been listening to recently, what else has influenced the sound of this album?

PB: I really like Tennis, they’re this husband and wife duo who do 60s inspired rock songs. I think they’re from Washington DC, they’re really good.

HL: The Pogues are favourites of ours, they’ve influenced a lot. Who else, a more modern influence?

PB: Pavement?

HL: Oh yeah, we really like Pavement a lot.

PB: Although we never really figured out how to make that influence come across.

HL: We definitely don’t sound like them.

PB: The Cramps?

HL: Yeah we like a lot of punk rock.

You guys visited Lisbon a few times whilst writing new material for this album didn’t you? Other than eventually ending up as the title of this record, do you think Lisbon inspired your sound?

PB: Well it was the name of one of the songs on the record first and the more we thought about the city and how much we liked it, we realised it just kind of fit the music. Lisbon has this quality to it; the word is just descriptive of something, something very vague.

HL: Yeah, it has this very illusive quality to it, you know?

PB: It is the kind of place that, especially as an American, you never think you will end up, I mean you have no real reason to because it is quite an odd place but then it is like the massive, incredible City as well.

Do you feel the burgeoning New York indie scene influenced your inception in the 2000s?

HL: In the beginning, it was more about not sounding like our old bands, The Recoys and Jonathan Fire*Eater – that was pretty much our goal. We added a piano to the line up for the first time and tried to base the songs around that and we never sounded like our old band again. That was kind of the only conscious thing we were trying to achieve.

Is that like a constant fear driving your music?

HL: Haha, not anymore! It was at the beginning – it definitely was.

So what was it about your old band’s sound that you wanted to move away from?

PB: I guess it was that garage rock thing. I don’t know what our old band was really.

HL: Our band was confused. We were a little lost. By the end we were very lost

PB: We went through a lot of phases. Some really embarrassing phases actually. But you know we were just like party rock or something. When we started The Walkmen garage rock was the least cool thing in our world, you couldn’t even get a friend to come to concert. Then all of a sudden their was this huge international success and we had done everything to avoid sounding like that.

You guys looking forward to the tour ahead?

PB: This is a pretty quick little trip but sure, I want to see where we stand.

HL: Yeah, it definitely feels more exciting when you have new songs to play.

PB: We’re definitely getting in the boat for a long ride. We’ve got like 56 shows in the next 2 months but in the last 6 months we’ve only done like 2 headlining shows that have been ours.

You’ve got Reading and Leeds coming up though?

PB: Yeah. We’ve done a lot of these festival things and we end up playing at 10am and it is sort of a drag. Where as last night it was actually a really good show.

It makes a big difference when people don’t have to battle early morning hangovers to come and see you play.

PB: Yeah it makes a huge difference.

HL: Especially to us.

PB: Yeah I mean, when we have to lug a piano across a field at 9am it literally takes the love out of it.

HL: That happens a lot. We’ve played Glastonbury before – I think we had the breakfast slot there as well.

What are you most looking forward to about the tour ahead then?

PB: Lugging pianos across muddy fields!

HL: Every spare second we have!

Well, thanks a lot guys and may you have many more early morning, piano-lugging time slots!

PB and HL: Thanks a lot!