The Walkmen
at the Horseshoe Tavern
September 10th, 2008
By Peter Gorman
The last time The Walkmen played the Horseshoe was the night frontman Hamilton Leithauser started having trouble with his right ear. This time may very well turn out to be the night I start having trouble with my left one.
The night began at a reasonably non-threatening volume, with New York klezmer-philes Golem trying their best to rouse a still sparse audience. Perhaps they seemed to some like a curveball of an opener for this bill, but the band put on a fantastic show despite the largely nonplussed Toronto crowd. The sextet flew energetically through a set’s worth of Eastern European folk-punk, in both English and Yiddish (with stage banter in both!), covering topics ranging from longing hopelessly for the love of your life (who also happens to be the one who put you in the slammer) to, errrr, the female anatomy. All this, of course, was with a wink and a nudge, yet still with a shining reverence for the music of the old country from which they draw their sound. Although many show-goers at the Horseshoe may have been reluctant to come along, for those who did, Golem provided a hell of a ride.
The by-now-packed (and, in fact, sold out) Horseshoe absolutely erupted when The Walkmen finally took the stage, and the band wasted no time in playing a series of cuts off their brilliant and celebrated new release, You & Me. First came the heavyhearted optimism (“The sun is now shining down on me / Leave me as soon as you can”) of “New Country,” with Paul Maroon’s shimmering, swaying guitar work leading the way, pushing and pulling. “On the Water” followed, pulsing along, sinister and moody, before effortlessly shifting gears, exploding into a swirling catharsis of an outro. Next came “In the New Year,” You & Me’s obvious single, carried by the taut rhythm section and propelled forward by the playful, offhand organ hook.
From there on in, the set relied heavily on material from the new record, with the band dipping occasionally into their back catalogue to deliver such fan favourites as Bows + Arrows‘“The Rat” and “Little House of Savages.” Peter Bauer and Walter Martin traded organ and bass duties back and forth, and the band was joined by a pair of brass players — a trumpeter and Golem’s Curtis Hasselbring on trombone — on a handful of songs, most lucidly on “Red Moon” and “Canadian Girl” (dedicated to the ladies in the room, bien sur).
That Leithauser’s urgent, gritty, cigarette-smoke croon could last all night — let alone an entire tour — seems near impossible (if any band knows a thing or two about the dangers of ravaging your voice, it’d be The Walkmen). The rest of the band registered a performance that was equal parts inspiration and perspiration (Edison be damned), with workmanlike execution — though maybe that was just the blue collars and cold, determined stares. As for stage presence, they’ve got it in spades. Sure, there may have been no flailing about, nothing overtly showy, but they planted their feet firmly and played with poise, confidence, and an undeniable Brooklyn swagger.
And when it finally came time for The Walkmen to call it a night, the sound guy cranked up the mic on the ragged old birdcage piano, and the band swung through one last number-a gleeful, beer-soaked take on “We’ve Been Had,” from their 2002 debut, Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone. It’s a song dripping with images of a misspent (nah, make that well-spent) youth: bad haircuts, too much drinking, too few longterm plans-leaving the crowd to file out of the Horseshoe humming, “I know it’s over / Somehow it got easy to laugh out loud.”
