Pitchfork

The Walkmen have a talent for playing at contrasts: Their first two albums masterfully skipped between hazy, fuzz-soaked ballads and pummeling, gravelly rockers. But while it's tempting to call these two albums "seamless," that would be selling the band short-- these records' artfully stitched transitions and interruptions are part of what makes them so great. Bows and Arrows' best tracks, "The Rat" and "Little House of Savages", are packed with the kind of unrelenting, energetic furor that rock music built its rep on-- but both are made even better in relation to their more subdued neighbors, "What's in It for Me" and "No Christmas While I'm Talking". So if anyone calls them a two-note band, at least their two notes are always posed in an interesting counterpoint.

Given this reputation, it makes sense that the Walkmen would seek out a new path-- but A Hundred Miles Off is too confident for its tentativeness to be moving, and too tentative for its confidence to crystallize into any kind of sustainable momentum. Lead singer Hamilton Leithauser has apparently been studying up on the Bob Dylan guide to pronunciation (M Is for Mmphmblgmbn!), as his usual charismatic croon often gives way here to a sometimes comically Dylanesque squeal. And the rest of the band never really commit to holding back or letting loose.

Sadly, there isn't much on A Hundred Miles Off that leaves a lasting impression. "This Job Is Killing Me" is all energy and no momentum; blurred sonics may have been well-suited for some of the Walkmen's more low-key songs, but for most of A Hundred Miles Off's, it's just frustrating. Drummer Matt Barrick does his best to salvage what he can, and for his part, he does lend some interesting percussive choices. Lauded for his inventive and driving beats (and bouncy stage presence), Barrick here frequently scales down his playing to straightforward galloping toms or washes of trebly hand percussion. But while this more skeletal approach adds some textural variety to A Hundred Miles Off, it also prevents many of the album's songs from congealing into memorable entities.

If there's a blueprint for how the Walkmen could have pulled off an album like this, album opener "Louisiana" is it. Leithauser pushes his voice to the very top of its range, forcing out a melody that breezes over well-placed guitar chords. A Jimmy Buffett-esque horn interlude gives the song an inflection that might best be described as "festive"-- by no means pejorative, considering how few bands seem willing to even venture into such territory, let alone with so much success. This is perhaps also the one song on A Hundred Miles Off where the music effectively draws on the album's overall atmosphere, rather than working against or in spite of it.

The Walkmen often take flack for putting out albums with one or two great tracks and a bunch of not so great ones. And while "Louisiana" and the closing Mazarin cover "Another One Goes By" are noticeably stronger than the rest of the album, the sonic push and pull that made the first two Walkmen records so compelling is almost entirely absent from A Hundred Miles Off. Despite occasional flashes of inspiration, much of the record blends together into a whole that is somehow much less than the sum of its parts; the ingredients are colorful, but the end result is disappointingly dull.