The human voice. It’s said to be the world’s best musical instrument.
The same medium that allows us to converse also allows us to escape the limits of language. An appreciation of which could not be avoided on first listen to ‘The House You Made‘ by The Walkmen.
The b-side to recent 7″ ‘Heaven‘ eschews the more frenetic tendencies of such classics as ‘The Rat‘ and ‘Little House of Savages‘ (both from ‘Bows + Arrows‘); on ‘The House You Made’ Hamilton Leithauser et al explore the possibilities hinted at in the sparse arrangements of such ‘Lisbon‘ tracks as ‘Weight On My Shoulders‘, and then do something unexpected – they drop it down another gear.
And make it sound bigger.
With The Walkmen’s vintage equipment fed through the mixing desk and the dials twisted by producer Phil Ek, the resulting sound lends an almost vinyl-esque warmth to the track, and this is a welcome, comforting and rewarding aural pleasure in this digital-centric age. All that’s missing are the crackles.
Overdriven guitars chime and entwine, but the sparseness of instrumentation means there’s distance between each and every instrument. There’s space for the song to breathe along its melancholic path. Sadly, dreamily…slowly. In doing so, The Walkmen fully utilise their greatest asset: Leithauser’s vocal. Freed from the suffocating layers of instrumentation, his ghostly, echoed and reverb-rich call to “bring me a love” – countered by the preference for “bitter love” – is as simultaneously heartwarming as it is heartbreaking. Leithauser meanders and steers the song towards its climax, building and building, as Pecknold-ian harmonies and Fleet Fox-esque guitars jangle to a close.
If ‘The House You Made’ hints at a more rootsy, earthy and relaxed direction for The Walkmen to head towards; if it means turning down the amps a little; and if it means pushing that beautiful human voice to the fore, rather than escaping the limits of language, The Walkmen may just be escaping the limits of the music they’ve done before.
No bad thing at all.
(Craig Sergeant)
