Spin had a nice feature today about The Walkmen‘s upcoming album, which is currently untitled and should be out in late spring or early summer 2012. In addition to touching on the new album’s sound, frontman Hamilton Leithauser reflected on working with producer Phil Ek in his Seattle studio: “We all thought Phil’s production on the Fleet Foxes record [Helplessness Blues] sounded so fantastic,” Leithauser said. “So we were psyched to work with him, and he wanted to record in Seattle. We figured we’d been in New York a long time. It seemed fun to go along with somebody else’s plan.”
The Walkmen said a few months back that their new album would be quieter and more lush than past releases. It may be quieter, but that doesn’t mean it still won’t rock. Leithauser acknowledges that Ek didn’t lead the group too far off the familiar rock-driven path. “You do everything you can to sound different, but in the end you always sound like the band you are,” the frontman said. “We’ve done a lot of rock in the past, and Phil has made the new stuff rock really hard.”
Read the rest of Spin’s feature here.
Here’s a video I took of one of their new songs, “Your Southern Soul”, when the band performed for free in Hoboken on 10/16:
I’m looking forward to hearing what Ek and co. did to it in the studio.
