The Walkmen
Bows And Arrows
On Sale Now
For $10.48

Since the 2002 release of The Walkmen’s debut, Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone, fans and critics have often described them as having the sound of two different bands: one with a chaotic, soaring, and unique live rock sound; and another with a spacious, wide-open recorded sound. This is certainly a fair assessment as Everyone... was written and recorded in their own studio before they had ever played a show. The live sound was developed during the two years of touring that took place after its release. On Bows and Arrows (Record Collection), the band's highly anticipated second album, the two styles gloriously collide. Self-assured and more fully realized, The Walkmen are growing into one of the most exciting bands out there today.

Bows and Arrows is a diverse and dynamic record that reflects the experience of the five members' playing together as it hints at their next steps into the future. Hamilton Leithauser especially, seems to have grown. His vocal range changes dramatically from song to song, and his performances sound more complete and confident than on previous work. He comments, “I sound more like myself.” Perhaps he speaks for the band as a whole.

“We thought we'd be able make the record quickly, just crank it out,” guitarist Paul Maroon says, “but we were dead wrong.”

In the end, much of Bows and Arrows proved to be just as labor intensive as the last record. While the seeds for many of the songs formed while the band lived in a farmhouse near Saugerties, NY, they headed south to Memphis, TN's Easley-McCain Recording (where great albums by Sonic Youth, The Breeders and countless others were produced) to record, and enlisted engineer Stuart Sikes (The White Stripes, The Box Tops). While the first session went smoothly, a second was interrupted by storms that blacked out the Memphis power grid for over a week (they would also be stalled by another black out in New York during mixing). By the time all was completed, the record had traveled from Tennessee to Mississippi and back to New Jersey and Marcata in New York, where, against most odds, the work was completed.

The end result is a far more complete picture then even they had set out to produce. Songs such as “The Rat,” “Little House of Savages,” and “My Old Man,” perhaps provide the strongest indication of the direction the band had originally intended. These songs are far louder and more chaotic than anything found on Everyone… It’s during songs like these where the sound of the band's hometown becomes distinctly apparent. When The Walkmen perform them live, they are playing as loud, as fast, and with as much emotion as the music allows. They are playing until they pass out.

While much of this louder fare took far longer than expected to write and record, it took the band by surprise when the lighter songs came together almost immediately. One example, “Hang on, Siobhan,” inspired by an old Appalachian standard, was recorded live at 3:30 am at Sweet Tea Studios in Oxford, MS.

“We were trying to play it as quiet as we humanly could,” says Maroon. “There's a microphone rattling around in the piano, but I couldn't even hear it being played. It was a matter of how lightly we could touch our instruments while still making a sound."

Other examples include the album's opener, “What's in it for Me,” the closer, “Bows and Arrows” and the galloping “Thinking of a Dream I Had,” which were all set to tape as they were being written.

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