Momentary Greatness: The Walkmen - "In the New Year"

Do you like your face? Do you wish it to remain in the front of your skull, presenting a somewhat more pleasant/less visceral view of your head? Would you view it a shame if this face were torn, ripped, torn, sawed, smoked, torn, blasted or - dare we say it? - rocked off? Then, simpleton, please move on. Remove yourself from this moment, forget we ever met. Blog? What Blog? What's a blog? Sounds like someone wrapped bacon around some summer sausage and lacked creativity!

Those who wish to part with said face, proceed.

AT YOU OWN RISK BITCHES.





Song Name: "In the new year"
Band Name: The Walkmen
Moment in Question: 0:40
File Under: Cardiac arrest

Today at the record store, I was choosing between three albums - The Hold Steady's Stay Positive, Okkervil River's The Stand Ins and You & Me by The Walkman. I picked the last one, even though I wasn't sure if I'd ever heard a song off it. I could be positive of only one Walkmen song in my life, "New Year's Eve" off of Bows and Arrows, and I know that because I was a lonely teenager and downloading songs after a blanket search of "New Year's Eve" seemed like the prudent thing to do. Conversely, I just paid over $50 to see The Hold Steady open for the Drive-By Truckers, and The Stage Names has made me ejaculate on myself numerous times. Then I previewed You & Me track four, "In the New Year." Based on the 20-second clip that was made up almost wholly with the tortured clangs from the intro, I bought the Walkman album. And then I didn't even KNOW man!

(If you suck and don't buy this album after reading this article, there's no good live video of it on youtube, but there are a few fan vids. Do NOT - NOT - watch any of these without reading the whole article! Because you might want to buy it, and the only true way to experience this song the first time is to have the biggest fucking can headphones on and just listen to it ABSOLUTELY MASSACRE EVERY BIT OF YOUR MIND.)

I'm a firm believer that art mediums can touch each other and get all hot and bothered, rolling up against some intersecting experiences. That said, that single organ riff tells a story with much more force than any novelist could ever hope for. It sounds the deeps of the human soul with more veracity than any poem and represents the gambit of human emotion with more stark vivid light than any film. It plunges from your ear drums down a long fucking tube, bursts through that bitch, sinks into your muscle tissue, your blood cells and your sinew, into the very essence of who the fuck you thought you were 40 seconds ago and it cleans you. You feel absolutely dazed. It has, in affect, sucked you dry but with music. Hamilton Leithauser wails like a lost banshee, like Grace Slick and Robert Plant got fucked shitfaced and did each other for a lark. The whole thing feels loose and gummy and like terrible doctors who dress up real nice for the funeral. It is a destructive force. It destroys you with its perfection.

Welcome, love. The canon hopes you enjoy your stay.