Surely with a name so out-of-date as The Walkmen, the group will be as well? It’s like naming your band iPod and expecting people to care in 20 years time… still, Fierce Panda have pedigree, and just because a band have a poor name doesn’t mean they’ve shot their bolt already.
Unfortunately the opening song, “The Blue Route” sounds like a demo recording that got accidentally released. A stuttering guitar pluck envelops the entire song to a clip-clop rhythm beaten out by percussion and drums, while a clearly bored and somnambulant singer whines out a New York whinge that was old a decade ago.
If anything, “Canadian Girl” is even worse. A pseudo-waltz is smothered by the strummed electric guitar shards and bruised by the couldn’t-care-less vocals. I initially misread the title, and the hoped-for cover of Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” never appeared, butaving heard this plodding, uninspired and tedious bunch of musicians at play on their own songs, I’m quite glad Young wasn’t subjected to the indignity of a cover by The Walkmen. While in the same musical universe as The Cowboy Junkies and Broken Records, The Walkmen are a sideshow by comparison.
I’m surprised that a record company put up the cash for an album as well, but to find out that this is a single from The Walkmen’s fourth album (and that doesn’t even include their previous incarnation as Jonathan Fire*Eater) leaves me astounded. If I had to put up with an hour’s worth of this solipsistic, faux-drunk bilge I’d stick a skewer in my ear drums and have my sense of taste removed.
It’s an undying shame that The Walkmen have worked for two painstaking years on this allegedly “meticulously constructed” heap of twaddle. I think it’s fair to say I obviously have no idea about the musical fashions of the world. Four albums of drivel like “The Blue Route”? Sheesh.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: Americana, folk, indie, post-punk, The Blue Route, The Walkmen
