On The Walkmen’s 2004 album “Bows + Arrows”, Hamilton Leithauser sang that he was “Thinking of a dream I Had” and twelve years later he still is. Where that song had the frantic energy of a band of twenty-somethings, the title-track from this record is pure pop craft built around an evolving and grooving structure with a hook that firmly plants itself into your sub-conscious; if you don’t find yourself humming this absent-mindedly long after you listened the song, you might want to get yourself checked out. The song’s narrator dreams in black and white that he finds his way back effortlessly to the home of a lost love before, regretfully, waking to remember that this is just a dream he “always has.” Leithauser’s past subject matter with The Walkmen always swam in the undercurrent of nostalgia, of an individual never quite comfortable in his life, always waiting for a new one to develop while pining for the one he lost. Now in his late thirties, thankfully, his subject matter stays much the same, only refined by a further distance from his youth.
On the Leonard Cohen styled “In a Blackout,” he describes a man watching a loved one sleep in the back of a cab as he recalls their time spent together in a “nameless town” before the sleeping passenger, like his other friends, leaves him to continue on with adulthood. The arrangement provided by new collaborator Rostam Batmanglij –formerly of Vampire Weekend- is suitably sparse in the beginning with a complexly finger picked minor key progression on a nylon stringed guitar before it slowly brings in backing harmonies and a brief one-two strut of bass and drums giving the song a cinematic scope suitable to the subject matter. Where Leithauser’s last effort “Black Hours” removed the harsher production style of The Walkmen records to the point of detriment, Leithauser and Rostam manage to find the perfect middle between soft and rough; a perfect sonic bed for Leithauser’s signature yelped vocals.
A late in the record standout “The Bride’s Dad”, finds Leithauser looking to a possible future as he details an absentee father’s attempt to tell his daughter what she means to him in the form of an un-wanted song at her wedding. It’s easy to hear Leithauser’s fear that one day he could become this man, an aimless singer who’s spent too much time away from home, trying to connect with his child who has become an adult in his absence. A simple piano waltz carries the exposition of the song, detailing the singer’s poor physical state of stained clothes and chipped teeth as he tries to get through his song without crying in front of his daughter’s unimpressed mother and restless guests. The piano drops away with the line “I think I worn out my welcome” leaving you to believe that he has failed in his effort to make amends before it comes back triumphantly backed by a full band as the singer obtains absolution through the belief that he swears he saw his daughter smiling as he’s forcibly escorted out by the aforementioned restless guests.
These nods to the past and looks to the future continue on in the instrumentation that is a Dylan Doo-Wop hybrid that isn’t quite modern but by no means a feat of re-creation like their bearded contemporaries. By combing his talents with Rostam in a true collaboration, Hamilton Leithauser has once again found a way to make what was old new again.
