After All The Bubblegum

The Walkmen “Love Is Luck”

There are bar bands, and then there are the Walkmen, a band who keeps making albums that always sound like distinctive, worn-in dives and taverns. Heaven, their seventh record if you count their Harry Nilsson homage, is a slight departure for them, at least in the sense that it sounds like a bar in daylight hours. They’ve mastered the sound of stumbling home after last call, captured the ambience of seedy back rooms and, in “The Rat,” created the aural equivalent of a bar fight, so it’s nice to hear something a bit more relaxed and understated. “Love Is Luck” is the highlight, and while its words contemplate the fleeting nature of passion, the chords evoke the look of golden-amber light filtering into an otherwise dark room.

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