The Walkmen- Lisbon

When, in 20 years, we look back on the Walkmen, Lisbon will probably occupy something of a holding pattern in their discography.

With four decent-to-excellent albums of melancholic almost-pop (excluding 2006’s bizarre note-for-note cover of Harry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats) under their belt, the Walkmen have this time confronted negative marginal returns. Lisbon is, to be sure, a good album: a batch of simplistic yet compelling tunes that find themselves right at home in the band’s catalogue. But in context, it feels stagnant—more of a regression than an evolution from 2008’s stunning You & Me.

Lisbon indeed bears its strongest resemblance, considering the other Walkmen albums, to its immediate predecessor, particularly in the quality of the recordings. There’s always a danger in upgrading sound quality, possibly revealing that the lo-fi aesthetic was simply obfuscating the music, which wasn’t very good in the first place.

By contrast, the Walkmen sound best when you can actually hear Paul Maroon’s plinking guitar and Hamilton Leithauser’s world-weary lyrics; that trend, which began on You & Me, continues here. Flourishes like the mournful horns overlying “Stranded” and the searching, just-off-the-beat guitar line of “All My Great Designs,” one of the album’s clear standouts, lend Lisbon a particular sonic depth.

The songs here, though, just can’t quite stand up to some of their earlier work. There is no “Donde Esta la Playa” or “The Rat.” “Angela Surf City” is an impressive foray into Best Coast-y beach rock, and Leithauser dishes out some particularly biting couplets in his weathered wail: “I was holding on to you/For lack of anything to do.” But “Victory” is dead on arrival, lacking a melody to guide the noisy but punchless energy of its choruses, and “Woe is Me” is a heady reminder that there are probably better ways of expressing an album’s ethos than, you know, making it a song title.

It isn’t that Lisbon lacks in deeply felt and occasionally profound moments. The Walkmen, like contemporaries the National, are part of a well-established niche where depression colors, and often illuminates, skillfully crafted pop music. At the same time, Leithauser prefers narrative tragedy distinct from the more neurotic brand of Matt Berninger (and, for that matter, Morrissey).

Instead, the problem is that the end result never achieves the majesty or consistency of which the Walkmen are capable and for which we might have hoped.