#26 on the 2010 Musical Bacon Calendar

Lisbon by The Walkmen

When The Walkmen created an album as good as You & Me, which I included in my Top 10 Albums of the Oughts, they set an impossible bar to surpass. The pressure to make something half as good as their previous album must have been insanely great. But they came pretty close.

Lisbon is not You & Me. These eleven songs sound somewhat like the long-lost b-sides to that seminal 2008 album. With Hamilton Leithauser’s strained-voice vocals pushing and pulling these songs along, you can’t help but think of the previous album. It creates a slight problem for me, hearing bits and pieces of the previous album throughout this new work. I estimate this will diminish in time, as similar situations have proven in the past (see The White Stripes, et al).

I’m curious to know what people who are not familiar with the band’s 2008 album think of this new work. Does it stand on its own, or am I so completely in love with You & Me that I can’t give an honest opinion about this new record? Give the video above a listen, and you’ll get a good feel for the band, but not necessarily a good feel for what they’re capable of. For that, you’ll need to pick up the record. I recommend that you do.

_p.s. I love the completely unplanned sentence above “…am I so completely in love with You & Me…” Of course I am: you’re all lovely!

__________________________________________

27. Scratch My Back by Peter Gabriel
28. All Day by Girl Talk
29. A Storm – A Tree – My Mother’s Head by Bobby Bare Jr.
30. 03 to TEN by Knathan Ryan
31. In This Light On This Evening by Editors