The Walkmen kicked off their set at a crowded Concorde 2 in Brighton with ‘Donde Esta La Playa’ from their current album You & Me. The bulk of the set was drawn from this album, intersepersed with songs from their back catalogue.
You & Me is an excellent album, and stood out from the pack of releases last year, but it isn’t an album without flaws. It can be a little one paced, and it has a tendency to meander through tracks that would be improved if they were kept tighter. These factors seemed to be magnified when the songs were played live. When the band did tighten their act, as on ‘In The New Year’, where Hamilton Leithauser really gave his vocal chords a bashing, it was great to see. The rest of the time things seemed a little subdued on stage and in the audience.
The prominence of their jazzier side seemed to frustrate some parts of the audience. Some members of the crowd spent a lot of energy shouting for ‘The Rat’ between each song. When this song came, two thirds of the way through, it did prove to be one of the highlights of the evening. A noisier and tighter song, it had energy that was missing elsewhere in the set.
The best song of the night was the first encore ‘New Country’ where Leithauser was joined on stage by guitarist Paul Maroon. This showed that they were quite capable of subtlety without losing focus.
The audience was left feeling that the band were capable of pulling off a really special performance, but this wasn’t it.
7/10
by Dorian Rogers
Related Posts
