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I don’t hate The Strokes, I just hate how they seem to be so frequently identified as the quintessential New York rock band du jour. The songs are good, sometimes great, Fab’s drum work has an atomic-clock precision, and the riffs can be simply fantastic, if not exactly Television. It’s just the stiff aloofness that prevents me from loving Julian Casablancas’ liquored-up intercom serenades; you know those sudden stops that a lot of the songs have? That’s probably the girl taking her finger off the speaker button ‘cause she’s fed up with his languid bullshit. She’s probably full of languid bullshit too, and not even worth the effort, but maybe that’s beside point. The point is that when shot through the heart, only Jules is to blame; he gives us drunken New York romantics a bad name. Then there’s Hamilton Leithauser of The Walkmen, an alkie crooner with so much charm on display on Bows and Arrows, he could easily afford to donate a pint to Julian for The Strokes’ third album. When I imagine Hamilton singing below his on-again-off-again’s bedroom window after a late-night self-pity bender, I can picture her looking down at him wistfully, perhaps a little embarrassed but reminded of why she fell in love with him in the first place, and offering him a couch to crash on for the night. Then even after he tells her off and bangs his head on the wall in the blistering masterpiece “The Rat,” he still sends her to sleep with the bittersweet piano lullaby “Hang On, Siobhan.” And while he occasionally borrows a voice from Jules or Bob Dylan or Chris Martin-meets-Shane McGowan, he always sounds sincerely passionate in the things he says, sweet or sour, even if he'll regret them tomorrow (though she’ll love and forgive him anyway). As for the rest of the band, they provide a soundscape for the whole affair that sounds more like New York than anything on Room on Fire- even Turn On the Bright Lights, Echoes or Stellastarr*. Where other N.Y. rockers’ atmospheres are hot, sweaty, cramped and blasé like (insert hot, sweaty, cramped, blasé New York hipster hangout here), Bows and Arrows is a warm summer night with a cool East River breeze, haunted by heartache and regret but full of possibilities for redemption. Matt Barrick’s drums pound with the city’s collective romantic frustration on “The Rat” and the Phil Spector-esque “Thinking of a Dream I Had,” while on “No Christmas While I’m Talking” and “138th Street,” he delicately floats the late-night reveries along with barely any percussion at all. Walter Martin’s organs, Pete Bauer’s bass and Paul Maroon’s guitar fill out the rest of the space with gorgeous grit, dampening the air and the avenues, reflecting the city streetlights like the cinematography in a Scorsese picture. As Bows and Arrows
evaporates during the concluding title track, our hero sneaks out
before his girl wakes up. He’s no longer banging his head
on the wall, nor is he bitching that “I Can’t Win.”
He’s shuffling through the early morning streets, singing
to himself, “There comes a time, there comes a time/to make
it right where I was wrong/Someday, girl, we’ll get along.”
Someday, indeed, Hamilton’s musical alter ego will likely
get his shit together and, one way or another, patch things up with
his sweetheart, while Julian will continue to face rejection from
vapid girls and their intercoms. |
