The Walkmen - The Blue Route [Single]

Fierce Panda

“What happened to you?” howls lofty frontman Hamilton Leithauser, on the first single to be released from The Walkmen’s fourth album, ‘You and Me’, and the honest answer is “not a lot”. Still vastly undiscovered this side of the pond, they have always sounded like a band that feels underappreciated, and I don’t see things changing here. ‘The Blue Route’ is as slow burning as you would expect from this band, perhaps even more so than previous efforts, and it took at least 6 listens to really sink its hooks into me. At just over the minute mark, Leithauser’s sandpaper snarl arrives like a sulky, drunken Rod Stewart, and when I finally succumbed, this is where it happened.

B-side ‘Candian Girl’ is even better, waltzing in at an almost identical pace with the same surfy guitars, echoing from the back of the room, but this time accompanied by brass rather than strings, and all the better for it. It’s a brilliant track, possibly the best off ‘You and Me’, with Leithauser now seemingly at the other end of the whiskey bottle, almost crooning us to slumber. “You will be asleep, when I go”, slurs Leithauser. That may be so, but we’ll sleep contently.

www.myspace.com/thewalkmen