Top 10 of 2010 – No. 6

Music — By Andrew Evans on 15/12/10

No. 6:    The Walkmen – Lisbon

If their 2008 album You & Me was The Walkmen‘s most spine-tingling to date (and to many it was) then its follow-up Lisbon – their sixth studio effort – came over the horizon intent on stealing its crown.

Lisbon takes elements of every Walkmen release before it and leaves them to marinade. So, Angela Surf City see’s the New York five-piece reconnect with the urgency of their most memorable song, The Rat, and the shuffling opener Juveniles nods its cap to A Hundred Miles Off’s Louisianna.   Blue as Your Blood builds with the patience of a band that know they are on a hot streak and Torch Song is a waltzing ballad with a heavy debt to the 50′s.

Hamilton Leithauser’s vocals are as pained as ever. Crooning one minute, screaming the next – fitting for an album that delights in such huge contrasts between it’s lighter and darker moments.

An album to fall in love with by a band to cherish.

The Walkmen – Blue as Your Blood (right click)

Buy Lisbon here