The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
The Walkmen · Hamilton Leithauser, Paul Maroon, Walter Martin, Peter Bauer, Matt Barrick · Fat Possum Records · eleven tracks
Mode
Guitar rock in an open, reverberant room, after the echo-laden guitar of the late 1950s and early 1960s, with brass on one song
Mythos
The far city as escape and light, youth as a season that ends, the voyage out, winter set against summer: myth evoked in titles, tone and sequence, not built
Phase
Eleven tracks; a ringing claim of youth, quick songs gathered early, a slow turn at the sixth, a hush at the eighth, and a slow, resigned arrival
Presentation
Album; eleven songs in one order, as first released in 2010, with no later edition or bonus material weighed
Register
Clean, echoing guitar, rolling or driving drums, a thin band and a lead voice set high, crooning and straining; brass on Stranded
Scale
One voice looking back on its own wildness: youth and its end, a lost or distant love, the seasons, and a city across the sea
Governing Proposition
Five musicians who began in clattering, organ-heavy New York rock set eleven songs of youth remembered and a far city inside an open, echoing room, and the record finds that nostalgia is felt as distance: even its fastest songs sound recalled rather than lived, and a voice pushed high and hoarse carries a strain the words do not name. It opens on the claim of youth and closes in the far city, slow and resigned.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record states its method in its first minute. A ringing guitar figure, bright and clean, sounds over drums that roll rather than strike, and a voice enters pitched near the top of its range and pushes upward from there. The song is “Juveniles”, and everything the record does is in it: the guitar heard through echo, the room open around the band, the voice straining against the air it is set in. The title names youth, and the sound places youth at a distance. It is a bright song that sounds remembered, and the rest of the record works out what that means.
Lisbon is an album by The Walkmen: Hamilton Leithauser, voice; Paul Maroon, guitar and piano; Walter Martin and Peter Bauer, bass and organ among their other parts; Matt Barrick, drums. Fat Possum Records released it in September 2010. It followed You & Me of 2008, and it is the band’s sixth album if Pussy Cats, its Nilsson and Lennon cover record of 2006, is counted. The unit here is the album as first released, eleven tracks in their first order; no later edition or added material is weighed.
The order runs: “Juveniles”, “Angela Surf City”, “Woe Is Me”, “Victory”, “Blue as Your Blood”, “Stranded”, “Torch Song”, “While I Shovel the Snow”, “Follow the Leader”, “All My Great Designs” and “Lisbon”. No track sprawls, and none repeats another’s arrangement outright. The quick songs gather early and return once near the end; the slow ones mark the turn and the close. Brass enters on “Stranded”. One tempo family, one production and one register of feeling hold from the first track to the last, and the record’s strength and its limit both begin there.
Movement II
The second song is the fastest height the record reaches. In “Angela Surf City” Matt Barrick’s drumming drives the song toward exhilaration, and the band follows it at a pace the voice has to strain to keep. The title names a summer, and the song is the record’s summer, set against the winter that comes later. “Woe Is Me” follows in the same quick manner, and between them they make the case for pace twice where once would serve. Even here, at full speed, the room is open and the guitar trails its echo behind it.
That is the record’s finding, and it can be stated. The reverberant guitar and the open room place every song at a distance, so that even the fast songs sound recalled rather than lived: nostalgia is felt as space. The condition behind it is one of age, men past their first youth singing of wildness as something remembered, and of leaving and returning. The disclosure is made through sound, and the voice is its sharpest instrument. Pushed high and hoarse, it shows a strain the words never name, and the strain is controlled, not lapsed: it is meant.
The disclosure has a limit, and it lies in the words. They are oblique by design and half heard, and they articulate little that can be stated and held beyond the ache itself. High Violet, by The National, from the same year and the same New York circle, stands at 7.8: it states its condition, money, fear, the city, where Lisbon leaves its own nearer a mood. The record knows something true about how the past is felt. It says less about what the past was, or about what the present costs.
Movement III
At the sixth track the record turns. In “Stranded” brass enters behind the voice, and the song moves in a slow sway, a lament where the songs before it had run. It is the warmest summit on the record and its hinge: from here the record looks back. The brass is arranged with restraint, level and swelling, never thickening into decoration, and it is the largest departure in colour the record allows itself. It belongs to the record’s law rather than breaking it, because it too sounds from a distance, in the same room as the guitar.
The making is skilled and in places load-bearing. Barrick’s drumming is the engine, rolling and loose in “Juveniles”, driving in “Angela Surf City”, held back to near silence in the slow songs. Paul Maroon’s clean, echoing guitar carries much of the meaning. Hamilton Leithauser’s voice is the most distinctive instrument on the record, and the production gives the songs air without losing their bodies. The costs are plain: the palette is narrow, the brisk songs of the middle, “Victory” and “Follow the Leader” among them, are competent without distinction, and outside the frame the songwriting is serviceable more than inventive.
The turn this record makes was begun on the album before it. The Walkmen started in clattering, organ-heavy New York rock, and You & Me, which this series places at 8.0, turned the band toward space, older rock and roll and the voice as the central instrument. Lisbon carries that turn further and holds it throughout: an echo-laden guitar that recalls the late 1950s and early 1960s, brass, a dryer and sparer room. The commitment is complete. The stake was small. The vintage sound was the band’s already and in wide use in American independent rock of the period, and the record risked little against an audience already won.
Movement IV
Before the close the record goes nearly still. “While I Shovel the Snow” is its hush, a song that rises by withdrawal, the drums held back to near silence. Its title names winter, and set against the summer of “Angela Surf City” it gives the record its seasons. It is the record’s second slow turn, after “Stranded”, and it makes the room for the arrival that follows. “Follow the Leader” and “All My Great Designs” come after it, and the quiet is the deeper for being broken.
The record summons old patterns and gives them a shape. The far city is a place of escape and light; youth is a season that ends; the record makes a voyage out. The title gives the whole one destination, a European port seen from New York, and the sequence travels toward it, so that the pattern of departure is carried by the order and not only named. What the record does not give is a figure with a face. There is no story, and the words are too oblique to make a person stand. The myth is evoked in titles, tone and sequence; it is not built.
One law governs the whole: a song heard from a distance, through echo and air, with a voice straining against it. The fast summer song and the still winter one obey it alike. But the ground the law covers is narrow, and narrowness is not coherence. The world held is narrow in the same way. A self looking back on its own wildness; time as the passage from youth to middle life and as the turning year; a love lost or watched from afar; travel and a far city. One voice binds them. Labour, the family beyond the couple, the state, history and the sacred are not there.
Movement V
The record ends in the far city. The title track is slow and resigned, and it closes on an open height. It answers “Juveniles”: the claim of youth at the start, the farewell at the end. That is the arc of the sequence, from youth’s claim to the far city, turning at “Stranded” and quieting in “While I Shovel the Snow”, and it is felt. The middle serves more than it enacts. Several songs there could stand in another order, or alone, and the record is in part a set of songs given a frame.
Sixteen years on the recording survives whole and remains available. It is returned to by those who know the band, often beside You & Me as the pair of its mature records, and the strain in the voice reads differently as the listener ages. Its presence is narrow: its songs are not in wide broadcast, and The Walkmen went on hiatus in 2013, after one further album, leaving it no continuing life in performance. The band is cited as a touchstone by some later guitar bands, but no practice or school turned on this record. Its sound was old-fashioned on arrival, which protects it from its year.
m b v, at 7.7, stands level with it, a record whose making and form are load-bearing through more of their length. Halcyon Digest, by Deerhunter, from the same year and also setting old song forms in a haze, stands at 8.2: it builds its form further and holds more. What holds Lisbon below Tier IV is a turn made on a proven path, a law kept over a narrow ground, a world of one voice and a reach that stayed within its listeners. Within those bounds it is lean, consistent and exactly made, and it knows one true thing about how the past is felt.
Act III · The Twelve
Eleven tracks, and the record is lean: no track sprawls, and none repeats another’s arrangement outright. The frame is compelled. “Juveniles” must open, the method stated at once, a ringing guitar figure under a voice pitched near its limit; “Lisbon” must close, slower and resigned, its answer. “Stranded” is the hinge, where brass and a slow sway turn the record from speed to retrospect, and “While I Shovel the Snow” is the hush the close requires. The subtractive test bites in the middle: “Victory” and “Follow the Leader” are brisk sketches in the record’s ordinary manner, and “Woe Is Me” and “Angela Surf City” make the case for pace twice. Both spare songs are brief, and brevity keeps the cost small. The cap is cleared by four tenths.
Score: 7.9 / 10
What can be stated is a condition of age: men past their first youth singing of wildness as something remembered, and of leaving and returning. The disclosure is made through sound, and sound is credited as fully as words. The reverberant guitar and the open room place every song at a distance, so that even the fast songs sound recalled rather than lived, and that is a finding about nostalgia: it is felt as space. The voice, pushed high and hoarse, discloses a strain the words do not name. “Juveniles” and “Lisbon” bracket it, the claim of youth and its farewell. Held below the gate because the condition stays nearer a mood than a meaning: the words, oblique by design, articulate little that can be stated beyond the ache itself.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Elevation comes often and at a moderate height. The opening bars of “Juveniles” lift at once, bright guitar over rolling drums, the voice straining upward; “Angela Surf City” reaches a different height by speed, Matt Barrick’s drumming driving the song toward exhilaration. “Stranded” is the warmest summit, the brass rising behind the voice in a slow, swaying lament, and the title track closes on a resigned, open height. “While I Shovel the Snow” rises by withdrawal, nearly still. Against this, “Victory”, “Follow the Leader” and “All My Great Designs” have energy or charm more than height, and the heights are bounded by the record’s scale: no passage reaches transport. Four or five of eleven tracks rise, which earns the figure and holds it.
Score: 7.7 / 10
Old patterns are summoned and given a shape. The far city stands as a place of escape and light; youth is a season that ends; the record makes the voyage out, and sets winter in “While I Shovel the Snow” against the summer of “Angela Surf City”. The title gives the whole one destination, a European port seen from New York, and the sequence arrives there, the claim of youth at the start and the far city at the close, so that the pattern of departure is carried by the order and not only named. What holds the axis well below the gate: no figure with a face, no story, words too oblique to make a person stand. The myth is evoked through title, tone and sequence; it is not built.
Score: 7.5 / 10
The inheritance is the band’s own: the clattering, organ-heavy New York rock of its early records, and the turn toward space, older rock and roll and the voice as the central instrument already made on You & Me two years before. Lisbon carries that turn further and holds it without a lapse: an echo-laden guitar recalling the late 1950s and early 1960s, brass, and a dryer, sparer room, so that the new manner becomes the band’s whole sound rather than one colour among several. That commitment is the record’s own. What holds the axis is the stake. The vintage sound was the band’s already and in wide use in American independent rock of the period, and the audience had been won by the album before. A refinement carried through, not a departure.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Change the form and most of what the record knows goes, because it knows distance as sound. The reverb and the open room are the content: a dry, close production of the same songs would make them plain rock songs and lose the sense of a life heard from far off. The voice, set high against a thin band, is the strain the record means, not an ornament on it. The sequence is counted here, once. It runs from “Juveniles” to “Lisbon”, from youth’s claim to the far city, turning at “Stranded” and quieting in “While I Shovel the Snow” before its close, and the arc is felt. What holds the axis: the middle of the sequence serves more than it enacts, and several of its songs could stand in another order, or alone.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Evidence first, and sixteen years supply some. The record is returned to by those who know the band, often beside You & Me as the pair of its mature records, and its sound repays close listening: the guitar’s echoes and the room around the drums hold detail that a first hearing passes over. The voice renews where the words do not; its strain reads differently as the listener ages, and that is a real yield, one that grows rather than spends itself. Against this, the words give little more on the fifth hearing than on the first, because they give little; the faster songs of the middle do not reopen; and no sustained critical study, tradition of reinterpretation or reworking by other artists is known to have reopened the record. A well real at the level of sound and voice.
Score: 7.5 / 10
The field is American independent rock of around 2010. The intrinsic force is real and bounded: the record showed that a band from the garage-rock revival of the early 2000s could age into a spacious, vintage, adult music without nostalgia turning to pastiche, and it showed it whole, across a record without a lapse. That reorganises what such a band could become more than what the field could do. Its devices, reverb-heavy clean guitar, brass, a crooning and straining lead voice, were in common use. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the record was well received on release, and the band is cited as a touchstone by some later guitar bands. What holds the axis lowest but one is that no practice, sound or school can be shown to have turned on this record in particular.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Survival is weighed over sixteen years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the recording survives as released and remains available. Presence is real but narrow. The album is kept by the band’s listeners and by its critics, its songs are not in wide broadcast, and the band went on hiatus in 2013, after one further album, so that the record has had no continuing career of performance to sustain it. The fabric is less fixed to its moment than most records of 2010, because the sound it chose was already old-fashioned on arrival, and that protects it. On the desk’s survival scale sixteen years would stand at 8.0 or 8.1; the narrow presence is charged a tenth or two. It sits a tenth below m b v, at 8.0.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with invention credited elsewhere. The making is skilled and in places load-bearing. Matt Barrick’s drumming is the record’s engine, rolling and loose in “Juveniles”, driving in “Angela Surf City”, held back to near silence in the slow songs. Paul Maroon’s clean, echoing guitar carries much of the meaning, and the brass in “Stranded” is arranged with restraint, never thickening into decoration. Hamilton Leithauser’s voice is the most distinctive instrument, and its strain is controlled, not lapsed. The production gives the songs air without losing their bodies. The costs: the palette is narrow, the brisk songs of the middle are competent without distinction, and the songwriting outside the frame tracks is serviceable more than inventive. It sits half a point under m b v, at 8.5.
Score: 8.0 / 10
One law governs the whole: a song heard from a distance, through echo and air, with a voice straining against it. Take the two most distant elements, “Angela Surf City”, fast and driven, and “While I Shovel the Snow”, hushed and nearly still. They obey the same law, since both are set in the same open room and both put the voice at the edge of its reach. “Stranded”, the record’s largest departure in colour, belongs to the law rather than breaking it. Across eleven tracks there is no seam and no lapse of manner; the record is unusually consistent, and that is credited in full. But narrowness is not coherence: one tempo family, one production, one register of feeling. A law held without a break over a narrow ground.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no further discount for the album form. Consciousness is held: a self looking back on its own wildness, in “Juveniles” and the title track. Time is held twice, as the passage from youth to middle life and as the turning seasons, summer in “Angela Surf City” and winter in “While I Shovel the Snow”, and the two are joined, the season standing for the age. Love is present, mostly lost or watched from afar, and travel and the far city give the record an outward edge. One voice binds these, and within its scale the record is complete. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve is what it declines to hold: no labour, no family beyond the couple, no state, no history, no sacred.
Score: 6.8 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.7 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Living Form and The Made at 8.0, then The Inevitable, The Imperishable and The Inner Law at 7.9. A record whose reverb and open room are its content, so that a close production of the same songs would lose what they know; drumming, guitar and a controlled, straining voice that carry the meaning; a lean frame from “Juveniles” to “Lisbon”; a recording whole and available after sixteen years, its sound old-fashioned on arrival; and one law, a song heard from a distance, kept on every track.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.8: consciousness, time, a lost love and a far city held by one voice, with labour, the family beyond the couple, the state, history and the sacred absent. Then Pressure on Tradition at 7.3: a band of the garage-rock revival shown aging into a spacious adult music, its devices in common use and no school turned on it. Then The Archetypal Deep, The Swerve and The Bottomless Well at 7.5.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.9 against a threshold of 7.5, by four tenths. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.0, The Made at 8.0, The Inner Law at 7.9, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Imperishable at 7.9, The Unconcealment at 7.8, The Archetypal Deep at 7.5, The Swerve at 7.5 and Pressure on Tradition at 7.3 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet at Pressure on Tradition, 7.3, below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.8. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.7, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the album as first released by Fat Possum Records in September 2010, eleven tracks in their original order, by Hamilton Leithauser, Paul Maroon, Walter Martin, Peter Bauer and Matt Barrick. No later edition or bonus material is weighed. Judged from knowledge of the recording, its sequence and its reception; no recording, sleeve or lyric sheet was in hand, and the lyrics are known only in part. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted. Facts that could not be verified, among them the producers and engineers, the running time and the lengths of the tracks, where brass enters beyond “Stranded”, and the reason for the title, are not given.