I don’t understand Seth Green’s Chris voice. I don’t understand Green’s appeal to begin with, but his choice to make a teenage boy sound like a parrot choking on peanut shells has always thrown me. I guess Green was at his hottest at this moment– he was still in movies and he was a supporting actor on Buffy The Vampire Slayer– and he was probably the biggest star in the Family Guy cast. I assume…
Cleveland owns a deli, which isn’t something we knew previously (at least, I don’t think we did. It’s been a while since I watched this show). Peter meets members of the mafia there, and they hook him up with stuff! Then they want him to escort a mobster named Paulie to a movie. Then Paulie tries to kill Lois. Interested to see if Cleveland’s deli…
really loved the walkmen one week band stuff. so many feels. only ever got to see them once at a festival and they got their set cut short for reasons i cant remember. also, gimme all the b-sides and rare tracks so i dont end up shaking around with a tin can somewhere. ive got a few but i am missing stuff haha.
Thanks– I appreciate the kind words! The first time I saw the Walkmen was at a festival and they were cut short then, too. I think they played a quiet song and then got a signal from the soundman and Hamilton said “Sorry, we’re being told that’s it” and they took off.
Anyway, I wrote a post about it, but Red River is really terrific. It picks up so well.
The last thing the band ever released was a 7″ I didn’t know about until late last year– you can find those songs here and here and I think they’re pretty good, even if they’re just songs that didn’t make Heaven. As a very cohesive band, the Walkmen sometimes cut songs because they didn’t have a place on the album they were working on and not because those songs were necessarily bad– I think A Hundred Miles Off sounds like one disc of a double album, and I always wonder if that “all over the place, every experiment indulged” feeling is part of why the band has distanced themselves from it. Before Heaven was released, they put out The House You Made, a gorgeous number that they said wouldn’t make the album because the thing already had a couple songs that sounded like it.
The Crimps is a track from their first EP, and I love it to death. It sounds like they accidentally sped it up to 1.5x its normal tempo, and it’s one of the great early Walkmen songs about feeling uncomfortable in a social situation Hamilton would have felt better in a year earlier. The organ on this song is really weird in that it just falls in during the chorus and is super shrill and then flies right back out. It shouldn’t work, but it does.
I love their Leonard Cohen Daytrotter session, especially The Old Revolution, which might have better music than the original version from Songs From A Room. They take their time with it.
Two more quick ones: they did a cover of There Goes My Baby for the soundtrack for the video game Stubbs The Zombie, which had a bunch of bands covering songs from the 30s through the 60s. The best one is actually Rogue Wave covering Buddy Holly’s Everyday. I don’t really know anything about Rogue Wave, but this arrangement is great– it’s so great that an anonymous group ripped it off for a Rachel Getting Married trailer.
During their Christmas kick, they recorded a song called The Christmas Party that I really like. It’s got a couple spoken word sections where somebody (I think it’s Walt, but it might actually be Hamilton) talks through a scene like he does not give a shit at all. It’s a distractingly bad reading. BUT then the song opens up and sounds like a classic 50s track and it’s great.
Robert Christgau is a pretty dumb guy. I think he tries harder to be provocative than insightful and he shoehorns his thoughts on sex into his work in the same way a high school boy shoehorns his thoughts on sex into conversations about anything, and you’re left going “yeah, okay, I believe that you’ve had sex, Rick, Jesus, I thought we were talking about how there are actually some good episodes in later Simpsons seasons and then you started giving me advice on how to go down on a woman.”
The Walkmen: Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone [Startime International, 2002] Just what we always wanted—Jonathan Fire*Eater grows up. Put some DreamWorks money into a studio, that was mature. Realized Radiohead was the greatest band in the world, brainy. Stopped playing so fast, hoo boy. And most important, switched vocalists from Nick Cave imitator to Rufus Wainwright imitator. Wainwright makes up better melodies with a dick in his mouth, and not only that, Cave has more literary ability. New York scene or (hint hint) no New York scene, DreamWorks isn’t buying. C+
There are some basic problems, i.e. a “C+” album should have its fair share of positives on any normal scale. I also don’t think I’ve heard a hint of Radiohead in any music related to The Walkmen; there’s more Radiohead in in a Jonathan Richman album than there is in the Radiohead-est Walkmen one. And it seems like there’s some pseudo-worldplay in the final sentence that implies the Walkmen are stealing from no wave (the compilation No New York is the no wave movement’s defining document, and if “(hint hint) no New York scene” doesn’t refer to No New York, Christgau is worse at hinting at things than he is at assessing them), but if you can hear Teenage Jesus or DNA in Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone, you’re listening to the album at a different speed than I am.
I think Christgau is reviewing the explosion of hot, young “The” bands in New York more than he’s reviewing the Walkmen here. (Fun fact: the Walkmen were originally supposed to be part of the pretty awful documentary Kill Yr Idols, but the doc eventually became about tying new New York bands to older no wave ones, and The Walkmen didn’t fit). I think Christgau was watching the culture of New York rock music change, and suddenly none of the relevant players in the arts scene gave a shit about him, at least not in the way that people like Lou Reed had in the last big explosion of NYC talent, and Christgau was left shouting taunts at people who weren’t even turning around to look at him as he called them “gay.”
Because the big craziness here is clearly the homophobia. The implication is that Rufus Wainwright is able to make better melodies than Hamilton Leithauser despite Wainwright’s disabling gayness, as if Robert Christgau listened to Wainwright, liked what he heard and looked up to ask “Wowee, and you’re saying the guy who wrote this is a genuine gay?” Also, I think Christgau thinks gay men are just constantly blowing other men. He now writes for Vice, which, sure. When it came time to review LP2, Bows + Arrows, he gave it a little picture of a bomb and didn’t bother writing anything, because Christgau is either Dennis Miller or he can’t be bothered.
I had a few Walkmen mysteries going into this project, and I was lucky enough to get Peter Bauer and Hamilton Leithauser to clear up the biggest one: What in the world does the band this criticism was leveled at think of it?
WELL
About six minutes into my conversation with Peter, I transitioned to the topic by saying “I’m going to read something to you that you probably haven’t thought about in fifteen years. Tell me if you want me to stop. This is Robert Christgau’s review of Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone.”
Before I got a word out, Peter jumped in: “I remember that well.”
He said he has a few writer friends here and there whose work he enjoys, but that he mostly doesn’t pay much attention to criticism. “Honestly,” he continued, “people talk about that guy and they talk about him in relation to film critics or whatever, but I can’t even fathom that someone would take him seriously. It’s just so stupid. I thought his review of us was the best review he wrote. Other than that it’s just garbage. But I thought the one he wrote about us is pretty funny. It’s this weird, homophobic, really angry thing.”
I talked with Hamilton a few days later and, after Peter’s great response, I entered into our conversation assuming he also knew the Christgau review. He didn’t. Here’s a transcript of me reading part of it to him, in what was one of the most incredible conversations I’ve ever had:
Me: I’ve always wondered—what was your reaction to the Robert Christgau review of your first record? Hamilton: [a pause] I don’t think I read the review. Me: Can I read it to you? Hamilton: Is it long? Me: Here, let me read part of it to you. At this point he’s talking about Jonathan Fire*Eater transforming into your band. “And most important, switched vocalists from Nick Cave imitator to Rufus Wainwright imitator…” Hamilton: ‘Nick Cave imitator?’ Me: Actually, you’re the Rufus Wainwright imitator. Hamilton: Oh. Me: “Wainwright makes up better melodies with a dick in his mouth, and not only that, Cave has more literary ability.” Hamilton: ‘With a dick in his mouth?’ He has ‘more literary ability?’ Who wrote this? Me: Robert Christgau of the Village Voice. Hamilton: He sounds like an idiot.
I would agree. But I’m glad that it exists, I guess, because in 2015 I was able to talk with two of my heroes and get their hilarious reactions to the music critic equivalent of a fart that’s been trapped inside a corpse slowly escaping and reminding everybody that it exists. What a weird, creepy jerk.
If Robert Christgau or his publicist ever want to talk, I am here and here. Would love to write a follow-up essay on this.
I’m writing this introduction at the end of my predecessor’s week, and have been following her posts on Panic! At The Disco despite having never knowingly listened to one of that band’s songs all the way through. The writing has been great and illuminating, but it’s left me realizing how uncomplicated my relationship with the Walkmen is. Kay has repeatedly discussed loving the band she chose to write about, but she’s also loved them long enough that she’s grown as a person and can go back and say ‘this song I sang along with has insane gender politics and the scene Panic were an important part of could be viciously toxic toward people like me.’
And I can absolutely relate to that conflict– everything can betray you. It’s just that the Walkmen haven’t. The Walkmen are cool to me, and I’ve thought that since I was in high school. I’ve changed so much since I first fell in love with them, but, as plenty of other bands fell off my radar or stayed on but left me a little embarrassed, the Walkmen have remained people I can respect. About a month ago, I sent an email to the Walkmen’s bassist/organist/guitarist Peter Matthew Bauer through his website, and he got back to me pretty promptly and we talked on the phone for about fifteen minutes so I could fill in a few gaps. I awkwardly cornered the band’s singer at a show he was putting on with fellow Walkman Paul Maroon, and he gave me a few minutes of his time so I could get his take on the worst record review ever written (can’t wait to talk about this one). I can’t imagine trying to pull that off if my love of, say, Billy Corgan was driving me to write about Zwan for a week. I’ve never been very good at separating the art and the artist, and the Walkmen have made sure that I haven’t had to; that the art is strong as ever helps. In ten years, I’ll be more embarrassed about the quality of my writing here than I will be about anything Hamilton Leithauser ever said in an interview or Paul Maroon ever put to tape.
The Walkmen were five guys (from left): Hamilton Leithauser (vocals), Walter Martin (organ, later bass), Paul Maroon (guitar), Matt Barrick (drums) and Peter Bauer (bass, later organ and guitar). They released seven studio albums, one of which was a straight cover of Harry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats (a weird record, even by the standards of the guy who released Son of Schmilsson), and lasted from 2000 to 2013, at which point they went on a hiatus and started recording solo albums.
Thank you to Peter and Hamilton for talking with me and thank you to Hendrick for giving me the chance to write about one of the best acts out there. I’ve enjoyed reading One Week One Band for a while, and I’m honored to be able to contribute to it.
Before we continue, I should acknowledge that I’m not coming to you as a person whose music writing you may have been reading for years. In the interest of giving some idea of who I am and how I’m going to assess things this week, here’s a music-related mission statement I wrote a few years ago and here’s an essay I wrote in 2012, during my time as General Manager of my college radio station (WVAU for life). My personal blog is here, and if you’re interested in talking about anything here, and I am very much interested in talking with you about everything here, you can drop me a message on either the One Week One Band blog or my own. I’ll respond to anything and everything I get. By way of author photo, here is a truly awful still of me from If We Shout Loud Enough, a documentary about the truly great Double Dagger:
Few things as awful as that. Let’s go.
This is a really big deal for me– I’ll be blogging about The Walkmen for the next week here.
I used a promo code, “BlueM,” that I found online, and I think that my airport shuttle now thinks I’m a member of the Blue Man Group.
Made a birthday card for my coworker
The Cartoon Art Museum posted this picture of me meeting John Porcellino, who inspires me all the time.
