The Walkmen - Bows + Arrows

Even though this is the second time around on a major label for most of The Walkmen -- whose previous incarnation, Jonathan Fire*Eater, rather famously dissolved after their first (and last) album for Dreamworks, Wolf Songs For Lambs, failed to live up to the label's sales expectations -- the band's second album, Bows + Arrows (which was released by the Warner Brothers imprint Record Collection), certainly doesn't sound like your typical major-label debut. Although it's tighter and more polished than the brilliantly shambling Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone, any worries about restraints on the band's creativity are dismissed by the first eerie-yet-warm strains of its opening track, "What's in It for Me": a gentle prologue to the rest of the album, it's about as charmingly off-kilter as the band gets. Read More