i dont know what all these lameass music journalists keep rambling about, but this new album bores me at best. and i’m an actual walkmen fan too.

when i listen to it, i feel like i’m at a crappy high school prom in california circa 1983 and these guys are the band. i can see the silver streamers line the stage…

i’m not going to bother breaking this down track by track, because about 8 of them could actually BE the same track. i’m still waiting on the lab results to find out. i’ll keep you posted. the only reason anyone likes any track on this album is because “The Rat” actually sounds a little different from the rest of the tracks, giving it a false sense of originality, a joke which everyone seems to be falling for. in fact, the only thing original about “The Rat” is its name, which gives the tracklist a neu-Brothers Grimm feel. “The Rat” should be called “Janet’s Nipple of the Forest”

while the first walkmen album, Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone, was seemingly hours of exciting foreplay, this one seems to be stuck in the middle of a bad orgasm.

this album sounds like the Beverly Hillbillies car rolling down the road with its wobbly wheels, backfires, and crap stacked 20 feet tall. every song seems to have a few of those guitar rock noises that make you ask, “did they fall asleep in the studio while playing this song?”

a lot of the tracks bear the apparently-signature “walkmen live sound”, which translates to “unoriginal studio goofiness” instead of “warm, symbiotic flow.” i actually wondered, “why do they keep playing the same song?”

as for the “new york” sound that people try to label these guys with, that’s just wrong, wronger, and wrongest. the only thing remniscient of new york that this album has is its smug self-satisfaction of trying to combine 70′s “cool” with modern minimalism.

normally i’d recommend the walkmen to anyone, but i don’t want this album ruining my cred.