Pitchfork

The first thing you hear, if you listen really closely, is the skittering string section, a part of the Walkmen's sound dating back to 2002 debut Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone and drunkenly resurrected for 2006's Pussy Cats. Next is the guitar, metallic and reverberant, with downtown New York downstrums on one chord breaking off into a transition that's both fussier and more morose. That's when Hamilton Leithauser's voice, still Dylan-esque, begins: "Oh I'm still living/ At the old address/ And I'm waiting on the weather/ That I know will pass." Drums and bass rumble beneath just as Leithauser proclaims the coming a year a good one, and a catchy organ fill rings out its agreement. And that's how it starts.

"In the New Year", the first available track from the New York band's forthcoming fourth album, You and Me, is more giving and direct than most Walkmen songs, sending familiar themes-- romance, the new year-- billowing out to grander proportions through the force of the performance. The push-pull between drumless verses and loud, swaying, barstool singalong choruses helps make for one of the best Walkmen tracks since Bows and Arrows' "The Rat". Maybe prompted by Leithauser singing, "It's louder than lightning/ In this room of mine," you start to picture what kind of room would have a sound like this. Turns out the vocals were performed in the same room as the band, which could explain the warm, communicative atmosphere. There's anguish, too, plainspoken, directed at a lover who "took your sweet time," and delivered with the melancholy dramatic flair of Jeff Buckley without Buckley's (or his followers') occasional meandering overkill. Leithauser's last rasps are lost behind the band's bleary run through one final chorus, and you hear the crash of a cymbal fading out. And that's how it ends.