Things we love #4: The Walkmen's Bows and Arrows

In a race to the broadsheets, scenes will always leave bands behind. Look at “New Rave” a scene so terribly manufactured and volatile that it only really exists in the pages of NME and on the lips of 12-year-old girls. While Klaxons and New Young Pony Club are reaping the rewards of the nonsense term by getting splashed across The Guardian and Q magazine like Snow Patrol were going out of fashion, some of the most original and unusual bands that have been lumped in with scene have been left behind.

Shitdisco make spiky electro that violently asserts dance music to be something that can be intelligent and complex. Foals surpass what other bands would consider to be the limits of pop music, using hammering bass, thrashing drums, shrieking choirs and any combination of electronic blips to create a soundscape of rhythm that demonstrates both stunning musical ability and colossal innovation. But these bands are likely to be forgotten, as we already have groups to represent their scene, and in twenty years time when you’re watching I ♥ 2006 you can be sure that they’ll be talking about Klaxons, not Foals, as the purveyors of the made-up genre.

Balloons - Foals Right Click and Save Target As to Download



If you need proof, just look back a couple of years to that whole “New Cross” thing. Basically Angular Records realised that a whole horde of exciting new music was coming from the same bit of South London and so brought out a compilation. They also told the NME bandwagon jumping and scene inventing department, which quickly wrote a feature with the headline “Forget New York, This is New Cross”.

4 years later and what are we left with? Bloc Party, earmarked as the leaders of the pack, are on to a second album and are going to be playing some arena shows in a couple of months. Art Brut have become indie heroes in the UK and proper rock starts in the rest of Europe. Both bands have managed to maintain the charm that made us love them in the first place, but what about the rest of New Cross? The stunning delicate punk of The Violets and the slightly rubbish political political poetry of The Vichy Government have sort of fizzled out, because the scene ran away without them.

Mirror Mirror - The Violets Right Click and Save Target As to Download

But the loss of these bands, although unfortunate, is not going to erode the indie landscape to greatly. Sometimes though, people get so caught-up in the scene that they overlook bands that will change your life. In 2001, with Britpop a stale memory and the charts infested with talentless pop bands, indie kids needed something to bring life into music. Enter the New York garage rock scene, the return of super slick post-punk guitar bands and all the skinny jeans and battered converse that come with it This scene consisted of hundreds of bands, but, once again, only The Strokes and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs will make it into the history books. There seems to be an unwritten law of guitar bands that states any musical movement is only allowed to have two bands in it. Now you could argue that, in this case, it's fair enough, seen as both the strokes and the yeahs are two of the finest bands you're ever likely to hear. But neither of their debuts hold a torch the New York's scene great lost LP, Bows & Arrows by The Walkmen.

If you're a fairly decent indie kid you've probably heard the Walkmen. Their anthem, The Rat, just happens to be the greatest song in the world ever circa 2004. It's bassically the sound of injustice, paranoia and raw anger. "You've got a nerve to be asking a favour" it growls over tumbling drums and furious guitar. I can't think of a song that is anywhere as near as honest and astute in describing what it feels like to be truely fucked off. But The Rat only scratches the surface of what the walkmen are capable of.

Their second album, Bows & Arrows draws on the grouchy cool of the Velvet Underground and the sparse, atmospheric but pungent arrangements of Echo and the Bunnymen. Tracks like No Christmas While I'm Talking are not songs in the traditional sense but just stunning sentiments, music layed out for you to explore. And when they Walkmen do wonder into more familiar territory, like on the Strokesque Little House of Savages, they do it with all the balls of proper guitar bands but none of the arrogance. They're not scared of real instruments either, piano and strings scattered across the record not just for the sake of it (The Arcade Fire) but because the music needs it, to combat the grit in his voice.

And what a voice. Hamilton Leithauser is one of the greatest frontment of all time, not because he wears great clothes (he doesn't, it's pretty much all plain GAP shirts) or because he's particularly Rock'n'Roll (although he did get arrested last night just before their SXSW show) but because he's a truely amazing singer. His vocals are emotive, stress carefully placed on only the most important consonants, some words slured together, some chanted like a mantra. He has absolute control of every song and can convey semantics through melody like no one else.

The Walkmen's more recent album has been recieved pretty poorly by the music press and to be honest, it's just not that good. But Bows & Arrows is a record you can fall in love with. It doesn't tire, you just sort of grow more and more fond of it. Bassically if you're gonna buy a record this weekend, buy this one, it will greatly improve you quality of life. Fact.

The Rat - The Walkmen Right Click and Save Target As to Download

New Year's Eve - The Walkmen Right Click and Save Target As to Download