Review by John Anastasi

It must be tough for a band like The Walkmen to play a venue like Philadelphia's Theater of the Living Arts to support an album that rolled out just four days earlier.

The band's songs are a little bit of an acquired taste and benefit from repeated listens. Their sound, which often finds the organ/keyboard competing with the guitar for top billing, is not nearly as clean and digestible as some of the group's indie rock contemporaries.

So when the New York City-based five-piece played the majority of its brand new A Hundred Miles Off record May 26, The TLA's crowd was likely hearing some not-immediately-accessible songs for the first time.

And The TLA, at least that night, was not an ideal venue for the uninitiated. The volume was a little high, the mix was a bit muddy at times and the crowd was less-than-energetic.
Which is not to say that the songs are not good or that they were poorly performed.

In fact, the opposite is true. A Hundred Miles Off is The Walkmen's most consistent collection of songs and the band worked hard onstage to do them justice.

Lead singer Hamilton Leithauser seemed to use his body to literally yank his Bob Dylan-at-a-rock-show voice up to every single high note. By the show's halfway point, Peter Bauer's sweat had soaked a set of clothes and the stage floor surrounding his keyboard. And Matt Barrick attacked the drum kit with lightening-fast fills and laser-precision timing.

Highlights included show-opener All Hands and the Cook, the Barrick-driven Emma, Get Me a Lemmon, the feverish middle section of Lost in Boston, and Louisiana, a tasty Cajun-Caribbean treat sprinkled with a dash of trumpet. The crowd got up for Louisiana and some choice tracks from 2004's Bows + Arrows album, like Little House of Savages and, of course, The Rat.

The Walkmen last performed at The TLA in 2004 and on that night the band employed some of the change-of-pace tracks from Bows + Arrows to great effect. The slower songs like What’s in it For Me? and New Year's Eve were great palate-cleansers between the harder-rocking tunes.

Unfortunately, this time around those were jettisoned - perhaps for the sake of momentum. But, in this case, they might have helped break up the parade of fast-tempo tracks and bring the crowd into the show.