Bows and Arrows | Loppylugs

Submitted by Tim Wiseman on 14 February 2013 - 10:51pm

Cover:

Artist:

The Walkmen

album-ID:

a_32

Nationality:

USA

Year:

2 004

Release-year:

0000

Num-of-tracks:

Track-listing:

What’s in It for Me*The Rat*No Christmas While I'm Talking*Little House of Savages*My Old Man*138th Street*The North Pole*Hang on, Siobhan*New Year's Eve*Thinking of a Dream I Had*Bows + Arrows

Length-in-mins:

Nominator:

Bean

meeting-ID:

m_13

Now-num:

Spotify-URL:

3F6JZOIgSRTEZGVk7TGS8h

Grooveshark-URL:

Bows+Arrows/2430858

Short-title:

bowsAndArrow

nominator-ID:

u_18

Meeting-date:

Wednesday, 30 July 2008

MusicBrainz-URL:

d4ae973d-8ffd-3f04-a8ad-aa3c90ec926b

Wikipedia-URL:

Bows_%2B_Arrows

Spotify-link-type:

album

Metacritic-URL:

bows-arrows/the-walkmen

Discogs-URL:

Walkmen-Bows-Arrows/master/117233

Allmusic-URL:

bows-arrows-mw0000333332

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108

109

117

reviewers-IDs data

-18-

-13-

-1-

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90

reviewed by

Tim Wiseman

Tells a sordid story with careless brilliance

2-6-10-11

Deliberately difficult and obscure, this is an album that tells a story and is bound to offend. The lyrics are slurred and tossed out - with some beautiful, hard little lines, some bitchy angsty insults - while the band takes it in turns to play their instruments. And all the while it builds and etases you, builds you up and lets you down. Until right at the end of this little New York story you have evidence what they could have done: in the last two tracks, and it all comes into focus, all comes into tune. This is the real deal.
55

reviewed by

Neil Hornsey

Stadium rock, starts with an early goal but behind by half time

1-9

I heard 'What's in it for me' used as a backdrop on Football Focus recently, so it must be OK if Garth Crooks likes it. This opening track gives an indication of what this band are capable of. A thriving, driving, inspiring powerful anthemic rock blaster that would grace any stadium rock festival.
The rest of the album unfortunately fails to deliver. The drumming is a repetitive thud, thud, thud. The guitar sounds suspiciously like U2 at their worst. And the vocals sound like the poor chap is being tortured, although the wailing is admittedly enjoyable at times.
The album briefly comes to life again at the end for the last two tracks, with some refreshing keyboard work, but on the whole the album lacks tunes and originality.
5.5 marks is generous, and based mostly on the first track.
42

reviewed by

Glyn Lewis

Largely unexceptional modern alt-rock

9-11

1-2-6-7

I can see how this might appeal to the 00s alt-rock audience, it's got a rough and raw sound, builds up and drops back in waves, has an anguished and emotive vocals, a few decent enough tunes, is fairly po-faced and all vaguely recognisable without being too obviously derivative - marketable elements all present and correct, so far so what? Us old stalwarts have seen this all a million times before and there's very little new to impress or excite.

There's a great overdriven organ sound that comes in on a few songs, and um, well that's about it really. The guitar playing is just annoying - noisy, sub-standard Edge influenced riffs that just fill up all the holes that have might have allowed the music to breathe. The drums are all straightforward rock stuff with loads of crash and bash. The vocalist does have a fairly distinctive voice, which reminded me a little of Rod Stewart I have to admit, but he's singing all this pent up emotional stuff that again catches the modern vibe; upset about something or other, what exactly - it's never really clear and let's be honest it probably wasn't that important in the first place.

To be fair there are some stronger songs towards the end of the album that did have more of an original approach, and although there are some annoying tracks it's not too annoying as a whole. And overall they're not too obviously trying to copy anyone else, but you'd have to say that's not really enough.
38

reviewed by

Richard Norbury