Nostalgic Already?

The Walkmen, And The Early 2000s Indie-Rock Boom

originally published March 14, 2007

Stylish, anger-fueled bands like the Walkmen know the clock's ticking down on indie rock's 15 minutes of fame. The Shins' new album is a phenomenal success; mainstreamers such as the New York Times are quoting bellwether online mag Pitchfork ; groups like the Strokes and Interpol are now thought of with a little nostalgia - which is ironic, since those bands' styles made older listeners nostalgic for the late-'70s rock bands they heavily copied. A VH1 special on indie rock, circa 2001, can't be far behind.

This leaves the Walkmen in an odd place. The quintet, first known to hipsters as the successor to Jonathan Fire*Eater (a lauded New York group that disbanded in 1998), and later known as the group whose song "We've Been Had" appeared in a Saturn car commercial, has been around long enough to be lumped in with the post-punk movement of a few years back, while still sounding like it has something to say. The Walkmen's most recent studio release, A Hundred Miles Off , didn't generate the critical fervor that their earlier albums did (particularly 2004's Bows + Arrows ). Last fall's release of Pussy Cats , a note-by-note re-creation of the Harry Nilsson/ John Lennon album of the same name, was largely ignored by all but devoted fans.

"People shifted away from us," Hamilton Leithauser says, diplomatically. Leithauser fronts the Walkmen, and is largely responsible for the group's notoriety. His voice, a ragged, lean, alcoholic-sounding wail - "the God-voice," as a promoter friend once called it - helped propel the Walkmen's status above a crop of indie rockers whose lead singers simply weren't very good at singing.

There are other qualities, of course, to the Walkmen's sound. Such as the warm, insular tones of the mostly vintage equipment they use (old guitars, old organs, old amps), and the fact that the band is unafraid to court both fans of Joy Division and Woody Guthrie (factoid: the Walkmen's first NYC show featured a cover of the latter's "This Train"). It doesn't help that Leithauser and his bandmates are themselves fans of the rock/ folk canon; while reading reviews of the group, you'll notice one pop icon's name, in particular, dropped consistently.

"Bob Dylan fronting the Velvet Underground," reads an Associated Press piece. "Bob Dylan guesting on a Luna tune," reads the San Francisco Weekly . "The fury of a young Bob Dylan," to quote NPR. "[A] mid-career Dylan," says the Boston Globe . "A Dylanish frayed edge," says the Dallas Observer . The old guy should get royalties every time his name's mentioned in an article about the Walkmen.

Indeed, the band does bear some resemblances to the Holy Bob's mid-career work. That's evident even on Pussy Cats , a somewhat maligned album that Leithauser himself confesses wasn't a very serious effort.

"That was just for a hoot. You know, it's not really one of 'our' records," says Leithauser. "It was sort of a good-bye. Our studio was closing, and we knew we'd get kicked out. So we figured we'd make the most of the free studio time. We had to choose something, so we chose that. We did songs in one take."

The studio is a non-musical example of the band's current state of flux. Dubbed Marcata, this has been the Walkmen's home ever since Jonathan Fire*Eater disbanded. The group actually took the money left over from Jonathan Fire*Eater's recording contract and leased a warehouse space in Harlem near Columbia University. For years, the space was a car factory; during World War II, it was used for nuclear radiation testing. Some time during the band's prolific stay at Marcata (where they recorded most of their albums), Columbia repurchased the building as part of a massive expansion project. The band was pissed. The school was kicking them out of their recording studio.

Leithauser and his bandmates had an already tenuous relationship with the school. Guitarist Paul Maroon studied Russian there for two years before dropping out; drummer Matt Barrick attended the school for a year. Ex-Fire*Eater Tom Frank also studied briefly at the Ivy League university.

In a way, the eviction is validation for the Walkmen, who for years have been steadily sloughing off their prep-school personas.

A little history: The band's genesis was not at Columbia, nor even in New York, but rather in a Washington, DC, boys' school called St. Albans. This is the same high school that Al Gore, John Kerry, Gore Vidal and even President Bush's grandfather attended. The then-teens' first group, the Ignobles, was a band full of cute, upper-class boys. When the guys moved to New York in the mid-'90s, the "indie rock boy band" reputation followed; Jonathan Fire*Eater was harassed relentlessly, and, while popular, lacked hard-luck credentials. The bandmembers attended college (organist Walter Martin went to Bard), dropped out of college, made some weird, angry music and fostered a man-of-the-people image that endures today. Getting evicted by Columbia helps.

Now the bandmembers are approaching 30; they are at the time of this writing in Australia, and they're having to confront grown-up issues like how to balance a family with band life, and how to deal with being older than many of their fans. Which is okay, really. If and when that VH1 special on the life cycle of the early-2000s indie-rock scene is made, you can count on the Walkmen being featured prominently.

Mark Sanders

WHO: The Walkmen, The Broken West, Ferraby Lionheart
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Tuesday, March 20
HOW MUCH: $10