valentine's day Spam Filter: The Walkmen New Album Details and Tour Dates Revealed

valentine's day You're looking at the cover art to The Walkmen's fourth LP, You & Me, coming out on Gigantic Records this fall (and not in August as previously reported). The press release states:

With some romance and drama, You and Me harnesses a sense of classic live-band production into meticulously constructed, unique-sounding rock songs. The sound would definitely not be mistaken for old, but it would be impossible to ignore the most timeless influences. You and Me offers a distinctive twist to the“Walkmen” sound of their first three records. Each song shows focus, and an up-beat enthusiasm apparent in all lyrics, music, and performances. It is a long record, clocking in at just under an hour, and it presents a wide range of ideas.

Intriguing yes? There's more too; the band also released the tracklisting and announced some August tour dates - including two Bowery stops - in advance of the record's release. Check it out after the jump...

Here's You & Me's tracklisting:

1. Dónde está la Playa
2. Flamingos (for Colbert)
3. On the Water
4. In the New Year
5. Seven Years of Holidays (for Stretch)
6. Postcards from Tiny Islands
7. Red Moon
8. Canadian Girl
9. Four Provinces
10. Long Time Ahead of Us
11. The Blue Route
12. New Country
13. I Lost You
14. If Only It Were True

And here are their tour dates:

18 Aug - New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom, New York
19 Aug - New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom, New York
21 Aug - Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour
22 Aug - Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour
27 Aug - Portland, OR @ Doug Fir
28 Aug - Vancouver, BC @ Richards on Richard, Vancouver (co-bill w/ Man Man)
29 Aug - Victoria, BC @ Rifflandia Festival, Victoria (Black Mountain, Destroyer, etc.)
30 Aug - Seattle, WA @ Bumbershoot Festival

Happy Friday indeed!

Listen: "Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone"

Watch:
"Little House Of Savages" by The Walkmen (live @ The Earl, Atlanta, GA 9 Mar 2008) on YouTube | download QT
"If Only It Were True" by The Walkmen (live @ The Earl, Atlanta, GA 9 Mar 2008) on YouTube | download QT

See also:
- The Walkmen, Franz Ferdinand: The Musician as Food Critic
- 8+
- The Walkmen and Vampire Weekend @ The Earl (Atlanta) - 9 Mar 2008 (pics, video)
- The Walkmen @ Avalon - 17 October 2007

Visit The Walkmen on MySpace

valentine's day The Walkmen, Franz Ferdinand: The Musician as Food Critic

valentine's day Despite superficial differences, the worlds of music and food are not all that removed from one another; look no further than this week’s Time Out and you’ll find a trend piece on the phenomenon of the “Rock Star Chef”.

The parallel makes perfect sense. Good musicians and chefs both make their living assaulting the senses with a particular vision and confidence that inspires and rewards their audiences. Meanwhile, the lesser ones quite often can leave a bad taste in our mouths, both figuratively and literally.

We’ve spoken of a few instances when musicians turn their talents to the visual arts, but what about when they dip their big toe in the choppy waters of culinary criticism?

Considering touring musicians’ nomadic lifestyles, the crossover is fairly natural. By virtue of always having to dine at restaurants while being on the road, they can’t help but compile a daunting framework of establishments and cuisines from which to draw comparisons (it's a practice we've tried recently as well). So let's look at a few examples...

We’ve heard about Franz Ferdinand’s singer/guitarist Alex Kapranos moonlighting as a food critic for The Guardian while on tour a few years back. What struck me when reading his blog Sound Bites was how attuned he was to not only the cuisine he sampled (Kapranos was a chef before becoming a rock star, not a rock star chef, sorry Time Out) but also to the atmosphere surrounding him. This includes other patrons – “They have an unquestionable sense of privately educated self-assurance. Girl One fixes the stallholder with an upturned nose and schoolteacher gaze. She barks like a vicar's wife.” - as well as his broader surroundings – “Kelly Clarkson is on the radio. Our pints of mud-brown Colorado Fat Tyre taste of Cadbury's chocolate and smell of Kraft cheese.”

Traditional food criticism? Perhaps not, but it certainly gives a more comprehensive account of the overall experience.

Enter EF faves The Walkmen. On the “Reviews” portion of their website where you’d expect to find album accolades and press, they've instead posted their own reviews of various unsuspecting restaurants visited while on tour (go HERE and click through to the "Reviews" tab). The results are hilarious. Delivered mostly in the third person (apparently Hamilton writes most of them), these scattered accounts focus more on the overall experience of dining out, in the process offering a fleeting glimpse of the simple joys and frustrations of life on the road.

Of the restaurant Guttenberg’s in Richmond, VA, he writes: “Walt and Chris got quiche and salad, Ham got crab cakes, and Pete got the grilled dolphin. Just kidding, I can’t remember what Pete got. The food took forever to come but was so good that they left the restaurant full and delighted. After soundcheck, they dragged the rest of the boys (Matt and Paul) back for dinner and sat outside on the deck on the sidewalk. The staff seemed a little annoyed that they had to accommodate a group of 6 outside. If it was a problem, and moving a table was really that hard, they should have told them before they sat them out there – that was how the boys felt about the waiters’ possible annoyance.”

And of course, the point to all of this? Well, when you see five dudes in dinner jackets roll up to your restaurant in a beat up van, treat them as you would Frank Bruni. Rock stars, chefs, food critics, artists, the lines have been blurred...

*above image found HERE

Listen:
Franz Ferdinand - "All My Friends" (LCD Soundsystem cover)
The Walkmen - "Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone"

Watch:
"Little House Of Savages" by The Walkmen (live @ The Earl, Atlanta, GA 9 Mar 2008) on YouTube | download QT
"If Only It Were True" by The Walkmen (live @ The Earl, Atlanta, GA 9 Mar 2008) on YouTube | download QT

See also:
- 8+
- The Walkmen and Vampire Weekend @ The Earl (Atlanta) - 9 Mar 2008 (pics, video)
- The Walkmen @ Avalon - 17 October 2007

Visit Franz Ferdinand and The Walkmen on MySpace

valentine's day The Walkmen and Vampire Weekend @ The Earl (Atlanta) - 9 March 2008 (pics, video)

valentine's day This past Sunday evening, The Walkmen (above) made it very clear why they were headlining The Earl and why Vampire Weekend - though riding the comet tail of hype and adulation - were still better suited as openers. The former are rock stars, plain and simple, having matured from carving a studied and distinctively narrow niche for themselves to blossoming into a dynamic beast of a live act, shape-shifting from stadium-sized waves of rock one moment to pensive and cavernous dirges the next and back again with ease.

And after feeling the bass saturate the room, the drums rattle my chest and then witnessing Hamilton arch waaaay back to hit that shrieking final note for an extra 20 seconds, I’m almost convinced they could have gone down the road a few miles and filled Turner Field with the wall of sound they created. It was an absolute privilege to see them play up close again in such an intimate venue as The Earl, where the sound was LOUD but mixed to perfection.

This is not to suggest at all that Vampire Weekend was disappointing or unworthy of praise; in fact, I was pleasantly surprised at how incredibly tight these guys are live. This is music that’s made for a live and social setting, i.e. party music. And one night after playing Saturday Night Live, Ezra Koenig did his damned best to bring the enthusiasm and the party to the sold-out crowd (who were all doe-eyed and all there to see them - see picture below). As I overheard the doorman say, “I like it, sounds like Jimmy Buffet.”* See more pics and watch live videos from this show after the jump...

The Walkmen

valentine's day
valentine's day
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valentine's day
valentine's day Watch:
"Little House Of Savages" by The Walkmen live (from this show) on YouTube | download QT
"If Only It Were True" by The Walkmen live (from this show) on YouTube | download QT

See more pictures of The Walkmen (from this show) HERE.

Visit The Walkmen on MySpace.

Vampire Weekend

valentine's day
valentine's day
valentine's day Watch:
"A-Punk" by Vampire Weekend live (from this show) on YouTube | download QT

See more pictures of Vampire Weekend (from this show) HERE.

Visit Vampire Weekend on MySpace.
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*words by Mike, pictures and video by Matt.