The Walkmen have, for a while now, been masters at any speed. They may have first rose to fame thanks to songs like "The Rat" from Bows And Arrows and "In The New Year" from You And Me but it became apparent with their previous album Lisbon that they also knew how to slow things down and keep it quiet for the majority of an album. Heaven shows how deftly the band can switch between these two modes.
Right from the start, "We Can't Be Beat" starts with a lone plucking and Hamilton Leithauser crooning with some other light backing and that's it. It's light and calming, but gradually grows. The harmonies in the background get pushed forward, the Leithauser gets louder and stretches his range. By the time the whole band gets in there, it's essentially the same song at the core, but the feeling is entirely different. That goes for the whole album really. The songs are the songs you expect from The Walkmen, but each of them have different textures.
"Love Is Luck" features a touch of that yelling-his-fool-head-off style that was so great about songs like "In The New Year" and "The Rat" but he never over does it. You can hear flashes of this sound throughout the album. Other songs, like "Line By Line" are intimate in a way that The Walkmen have never really been before. Just a guitar and voice, it's spare and haunting. Leithauser's voice has always been one of the greatest things about The Walkmen, and it's front and center on "Line By Line" like never before, really.
Right after that song though, is "Song For Leigh" which is not only probably the best song on the album, but one of the best songs in recent memory. It's strange to hear a love song played so straight in the world of indie rock. Usually, feelings are obfuscated behind layers of flowery poetry and metaphor, but here the feelings are right on the table. The chorus repeats the line "I'll sing myself sick about you." It's a great line and the repeated sibilance is fun to listen to and sing along with. It's hard sometimes to say what you want to say in a song and still have it fit within the meter of the lyrics, but they absolutely nail it here.
It shouldn't be much of a surprise at this point that The Walkmen have made a really great album here. They've been making really great albums for a number of years, and those years are starting to show. It's a mature album, some people even go as far as to call it "dad-rock." I wouldn't go that far, most people that's an awful, reductive term. It's a rich album, with a lot of different textures on it. If dads like songs like "Line By Line" their kids may like the surf-rock styles of "Heaven," Mom might like "Dreamboat" and the dog could be tapping its paws to "Heartbreaker." What I'm trying to say is that album has a lot of really great songs, and it's a great album.
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