By Jin Moon

The Walkmen

You may have heard The Walkmen when their song, "We've Been Had," was featured in a Saturn Ion commercial last year. That spot and lots of critical praise gave The Walkmen, a New York-based quintet, more than enough cred to sign a record deal with Record Collection, a division of Warner Bros. Records.

With their sophomore album, Bows and Arrows, The Walkmen, prove that their brand of rock is solid, classic and most of all, passionate. Fierce songs like "The Rat" and "Thinking of a Dream I Had" make you flinch in awe of the rabid vocals, while songs like "No Christmas While I'm Talking" and "138th Street" are slower-paced and lyrically more introspective.

By the end of the album, it is clear that these five musicians – Hamilton Leithauser on vocals, Peter Bauer on bass, Matt Barrick on drums, Paul Maroon on guitar and Walter Martin on organs – have pushed themselves to exceed expectations on the follow-up to their critically-acclaimed StarTime International Records debut, Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone. The effort is paying off with national publications like Entertainment Weekly singing their praises.

Playback recently spoke with lead singer Hamilton Leithauser to chat about the new album and his songwriting process.

Playback: How would you say Bows and Arrows is different from Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone?

Hamilton Leithauser: It was all done within a smaller amount of time so there's a more consistent sound throughout the album. Bows and Arrows also has a more developed sound because we recorded it after we'd been a band for longer. Plus, it's got a lot of rockers on it, which we didn't really have on the last album.

How do you think the album is different from your live performances?

We tried to make this album closer to our live performance than the last album was. When we recorded the last album, we never played live before. It sounded a little bit like a studio recording, not that that's a bad thing. That's just what it sounded like. So for this recording, we cut the overdubs out as much as possible, and we just concentrated on performance. It's tough. Trying to get the live sound across on a CD is the hardest thing.

What do you think has contributed to your growth as an engaging performer?

We just got more comfortable playing together. When we started out, we didn't know anything. We were sort of nervous and being and playing on stage. It's an awkward thing. It's also kind of hard when you're performing and people are writing about it. You don't know what you're doing and sometimes you just know you suck.

When you begin to write a song, what inspires you?

It's really tough to get inspired. So we go into the studio and try to play. Somebody will have a musical idea. We literally start with a guitar note. It's so weird how it works because it'll usually sound like nothing. Pete, Walt and I are gonna go meet today to try and come up with stuff. We'll probably come up with like five things that sound great to the three of us. And then once we bring Paul and Matt in, they'll just sound terrible. It's just really tough to get it sounding good with everyone in the room. But if everything does come together, then I take it home and write the lyrics and the melody. I also begin to arrange the song.

Some songs will just take forever. They're the ones that I usually end up not liking as much -- the ones that have the really forced melodies. The more you think about it, the less spontaneous it becomes so it never really comes together as well. But it's only one in a million that that actually happens. So you find yourself most of the time trying to think of stuff and coming up with sort of second tier stuff.

Which Walkmen song is your favorite?

I've played "The Rat" a lot in my life so I think I have a real attachment to that song. When I think of Bows and Arrows, I think of that song. We spent so much time recording that song. It was horrible trying to get that song done, but I'm pleased with the way it came out.

The Walkmen recently inked a record deal with Record Collection, a smaller division of Warner Bros. Was it important to look for a small label?

Major labels don't give a crap about bands. All they care about is if you have a radio hit or not. They tell you they're gonna stick with you, but that's just not true. So we figured we were never gonna have a radio hit because we just don't really sound like that. We knew that if we had signed with like a big label that they would just shelve us.