Despite ten years of music-making experience, New York’s own The Walkmen pride themselves on reinventing their wheel. But originality isn’t an easy thing to find time and time again. In fact, the band struggled to veer away from past albums’ influences.
It was only a matter of time, however, before The Walkmen found their muse, allowing them to explore creative territories they’d hadn’t ever tried in order to put together their sixth album Lisbon. Read on as bassist Walter Martin discusses the story behind Lisbon, the song that changed their career and the specific part of the world they long to tour.
I’ve heard that the new record is called Lisbon partially because of all the trips the band took to Portugal.
Well, we went there a few times in the last couple of years to perform and ended up doing some writing, too. It was really nice over there, we really liked it. Lisbon in particular set the tone of the beginning of the writing process. It gave us direction, even though a lot of the later stuff ended up not sounding like the early songs, such as “Lisbon.”
Did you guys feel as though you were gravitating toward a particular sound as you started to put together the album? Or did it all sort of materialize unconsciously?
At first it was more unconscious. But then there was a moment when we decided that we needed to make a few rules in order to try to get things done, and done more differently because there were some songs that sounded more like our last record, You & Me. We decided to set up some simple guidelines to help our direction. We wanted our music to sort of imitate the sound of really early, fun recordings by Elvis, using those basic elements, like a slapback guitar and a quiet drum and vocal. Having a sort of sound in mind prior to actual songwriting makes it easier to put songs together.
How would you describe the mood of the album?
I think it’s sort of happier sounding. Does it come across at all? I think that it’s definitely a little more fun, happy and lighter. Hmm, at first, it was kind of hard to tell since by the end of the whole recording process, we had like 30 songs to work with. It was in the editing process that Lisbon was really shaped as a whole. The songs we liked the most, which were the more upbeat ones, decided how the whole thing would feel.
I agree. Compared to past Walkmen albums, Lisbon feels less heavy to me. The song “Stranded” feels beautiful and romantic.
Yeah. Or that song, “Woe Is Me,” which is fast and light. You know, in our career (and we’ve been making music for nearly ten years), we wanted to have at least one fast and light song. And now I can’t believe those two adjectives could be applied to one of our songs… it’s the first time we’ve ever done it.
You guys must have been so thrilled when you writing the song! Were you all like, “We have just GOT to try it this way!”
Yes! We were like, “We should try it!” We definitely kept it in mind as we were writing. And as the song came together and began to sounded like that — fast and light — we got excited. But we try not to get attached to things before they get done, because so many things you love don’t get finished and end up falling by the wayside.
What is the inspiration for the album?
As far as sonically, early Elvis recordings were definitely what we were going for. You don’t hear it that much, but I think you can catch a little bit in the guitar and in echos on the drums. I think that was a direct and deliberate influence. As far as everything else, I don’t really know. We all do a lot of different things and tried a lot of different things. It was a year-long process of writing. All the different things influenced the final product.
The Walkmen have been making music for a decade now. How has the writing process changed for the band?
We never sit down the five of us anymore. We sort of come up with stuff in much smaller groups because we are much more productive in smaller groups. We only get together the five of us like once a month. Once we feel like we have a batch of songs that are really close to being finished, then we will do a five-band practice, do a demo and call the song done. Whereas back in the day, during the first five years of the band, there was a lot of time spent with the five of us in one room. And it was painful [laughs] and it was a really slow process. It’s become much more efficient, and lately we’ve had a lot of songs to choose from when finalizing albums.
You mentioned that you had thirty songs to work with by the end of the Lisbon recording sessions. What’s happening with the ones that didn’t make the cut?
There were like five or six that we really did love that didn’t make it onto the album. It’s just that when we put the album together and played it all the way through, those songs just weren’t really fitting in. So about two will be available on iTunes, and two are on the 7". Releases in the UK will probably get a couple because they always want extra stuff [laughs]. So those songs will be out there somehow…
The cover art for Lisbon is rather interesting. It looks dreamy and nostalgic in a way. How did you decide on it?
It’s two pictures on top of each other, like a double exposure kind of thing. It was taken by an Italian photographer. I first saw his pictures at a show in New York, and then asked our manager to email his people to see if we could use his work. He had passed away, but his wife wrote back saying that he had been a big fan of music and that we could use any of his pictures!
The last time I saw you guys perform was in 2009 at the Guggenheim museum in NYC. It was certainly a unique place to see live music. Where has the band not played yet?
The Guggenheim was really cool actually. We were worried it was going to sound pretty bad, but after seeing a video recording of the show we realized it sounded really good. It was fun and great to play in that room.
As for places we want to play, but have not played yet…Eastern Europe! Apparently bands go there, I just saw that No Age did a whole tour there. We really want to get out there.
