Last Monday, MTV TWO reviewer Emmet Mannion braved the unseasonable weather to see The Walkmen at London's ULU.
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75% of the ULU crowd tonight will have seen American band The Walkmen before and followed their path intently since influential album ‘Bows + Arrows’. The other 25% will have either tapped into their wall of sound via the route of the O.C’s sickening dross, or discovered The Walkmen through indie anthem, ‘The Rat’.
This may go some way towards explaining why the tightly packed crowd are so tight-lipped and docile. After all, it’s like Moscow outside so let’s embrace each other for the body heat at least, if not the music.
The reflective and dour start to the gig is perfect. ‘New Country’ from their new album ‘You and Me’ starts off like a funeral procession and eases you into the gig like an opening hymn would at church - the congregation are now fully engaged. ‘On The Water’ is dictated by a jazz tempo, picking up pace and aggression en route, steered beautifully by the control of Hamilton Leithauser’s voice.
Palpable tension incited by albums past is replaced with a reflective directive. Sandwiched between the new stuff is ‘All Hands + The Cook’, like a truffle filling flanked by two thin slices of economy bread. They get the ratio of old and new just right, but there’s a remnant of embarrassment attached to harking back to past glories.
The opening chords of ‘The Rat’ whip up anger and rage for this savage four-minute attack. The crowd are still in ironing board mode and it’s increasingly looking like a core stability class with the resident physio. It could be the result of paying Leithauser’s voice absolute reverence though. Its sheer power and gusto has everyone nailed to the floor. The width of open mouths has replaced fist-pumping and raucous stomping as the barometer for measuring excitement.
With an encore bereft of ‘Little House Of Savages’ it’s clear to see The Walkmen have moved on. Don’t you just hate it when that happens?
Emmet Mannion