By: Dave Gil de Rubio
No one can ever accuse Hamilton Leithauser of rushing the creative process. The guitarist and founding member of New York City indie rockers The Walkmen spent the past eight years working on his newly released album, This Side of the Island. It’s a project Leithauser began when Barack Obama was wrapping up his second term. The creative struggle to complete the new project lasted long enough for Leithauser to not see The Walkmen come off a hiatus for a 2023 reunion tour, but he also managed to release a pair of records in 2020—The Loves of Your Life and Live! At Café Carlyle. Working out of his appropriately named home studio called “The Struggle Hut,” which is located in the heart of Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood, the former philosophy major is equal parts relieved and rueful that it took so long to complete This Side of the Island.“A lot of those songs I wanted try to finish for that record, The Loves of Your Life, but I just couldn’t complete them,” he admitted. “I finished another batch of songs I thought was a record, but these songs wouldn’t die. I couldn’t let it go. I just love making music and trying to find new ways to put stuff together. Having my own studio now, I really got into mixing and things I couldn’t do when I was younger while recording things in ways I think sound cool. I have zero interest in ever recording anything that’s super hi-fi anymore although I think in the end, my records wind up sounding super hi-fi. I prefer to do it myself. It’s just the desire to create something and the only thing I can do is music. I tried to do other stuff, but I couldn’t.”
While grappling with how to get his latest project across the finish line, Leithauser reconnected with Aaron Dessner, an old friend who has become a renowned producer. The duo’s relationship dates back to when Dessner’s band, The National, was opening for The Walkmen in the early aughts. For the 46-year-old indie rock singer-songwriter, running into Dessner couldn’t have come at a better time.
“You can definitely drive yourself into a spot where you don’t know which end is up and you don’t have a helping hand to tell you it’s time to stop,” Leithauser explained. “I ran into Aaron somewhere at a music festival and was at the point where I didn’t know what I had. I was just telling him that and he invited me up to his studio to see if I wanted to come and listen, get his thoughts or whatever. I went up there and we listened through everything and the first thing he said to me was that I was done and didn’t need him. He said he loved what I presented and thought it was completely done.”
Leithauser added, “I’d been stuck with this thing for years, but it was fresh for him. I think I was almost at the end and didn’t even realize it. Aaron is good at making things sound modern and he added this modern-sounding element to it that I just didn’t have. It changed my whole perspective on the entire thing and immediately when I left, I thought that people have got to hear this, which is always a good sign. It was a push over the cliff I needed and was a really solid favor.”
Clocking in at around a half hour, the nine tracks that make up This Side of the Island showcase some of Leithauser’s charming musical eccentricities. The meandering saxophone lines infusing the ethereal “Ocean Roar” give off whiffs of mid-‘70s era Bowie while the vibraphone runs sprinkled throughout “What Do I Think” add a carnival-like wistfulness to the lyrical musings about the current generation. Elsewhere, Leithauser’s laconic vocals and the floating guitar riffs threaded through “Off the Beach” give this dreamscape a particularly melancholic sheen. Finally, the title track closing out the album has a subtle buildup that rises above the detritus of a collapsed relationship accented by the yearning vulnerability of the narrator wearily pleading, “I just want you to love me,” making it an ode to anyone who’s had their heart broken.
Early Days
A native of Washington, D.C., Hamilton Leithauser grew up in a musical family where, “My mom loved country music and my dad loved The Rolling Stones and all kinds of music from Detroit, being that he was from there.” Having gone to countless Arlington Chili Cookoffs throughout his childhood to watch his father play on stage, it wouldn’t be until he was 15 where the fledgling musician would finally take the plunge into becoming a musician
“When I got to be 15, I started my first band with my cousin and my friend,” he explained. “The both of them said they weren’t going to sing, so I said I would sing. I probably was willing to do that because sometime way back when I remember seeing my dad sing.”
The Walkmen
By the time Leithauser was in his twenties, he was riding the fumes of the D.C. music scene populated by Minor Threat, Bad Brains and various go-go bands. Older cousin and future bandmate Walter Martin also proved to be a major influence. Martin eventually wound up in ’90s post-rock outfit Jonathan Fire*Eater while Leithauser founded indie rock band The Recoys in 1996. It was only after both groups broke up toward the end of the ’90s that the cousins joined forces in The Walkmen, just as the guitar-driven post-rock New York City scene that included The Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs blew up in the early aughts. For Leithauser, the success he found in The Walkmen was quite a contrast to the struggles he went through with his prior band.
“I remember played the big room at Coney Island with The Recoys,” Leithauser recalled. “We were downstairs and my friends Nick and Josh were the only two people in the audience. Halfway through the set, we finished the song and Nick said they had to go. Off they went and we wound up playing to an empty room. I did all that for years. When 2000 came around, we started The Walkmen. It started to work and it was like magic for me. I couldn’t believe that it was even possible to have anybody come to your show and then sell out a club. I felt like I should be paying them for this because it was so incredible.”
A huge commercial breakthrough never materialized for The Walkmen during the band’s first run that ended in its last show in December 2013, even as acts that opened for them ranging from Modest Mouse and Death Cab for Cutie to The National seemed to hit that next level of success. And while the band went on hiatus shortly after that (Leithauser quipped, “That’s not my word, that’s [Walkmen bassist] Pete [Bauer’s] word. I’d call it more of a break.”), Leithauser has carried on as a solo act. Having the band get back together in 2023 was a pleasant surprise for him.
“When we did The Walkmen reunion, it ended up going so much better than anyone thought it would,” Leithauser said. “I was thinking I had to finish my record, but in the back of my mind I was thinking that since I hadn’t finished my record, why would I not keep playing with my friends, having fun and doing this? It went on for a lot longer than we realized. Everybody is glad to take a break again, but there is no reason to close that door. I never wanted to close the door the first time. I don’t know why we went on that break.”
Playing Live
With This Side of the Island officially out, Leithauser is relishing bringing his new jams to the masses. And while he’s a veteran of sweaty rock clubs, he’s enjoyed refining his live music craft thanks to his experience playing at The Café Carlyle, a legendary Manhattan supper club better known for hosting cabaret acts ranging from Bobby Short and Eartha Kitt to Judy Collins and Woody Allen. For The Walkmen vocalist/guitarist, playing there was a learning curve he wound up embracing for non-Café Carlyle shows.
“The [Carlyle folks] wanted to branch out to a younger crowd, and they saw me as the bridge person,” he said. “The first thing I did was look at the lineup. It was Tony Danza and Isaac Mizrahi and I thought, ‘This is not my scene.’ But I realized after a little adjustment period you’re not just the guy on the stage playing the guitar, you’re also the entertainment. You socialize and talk to people. When I got older, it became much more of a social thing and I wanted to talk to the people, crack jokes and tell them the story behind my song. I spent so much time with the lyrics that I wanted people to know it’s not nonsense. I think it makes me a better songwriter because I have to be clear about what I’m saying now because I’m going to be explaining it to people.”
For this current tour, expect Leithauser to be giving fans plenty of that new school interaction.
“I’m going to play all my new jams along with all the hits—the oldies,” he said with a grin. “I like to have a cocktail, tell loud stories and jokes, depending on how many drinks I’ve had. We may have played all the new songs two times at two shows in Austin. I could tell people liked them, even though this was the first time we played them. I had a sense that it was working. I want to keep it small, like when I play at the Carlyle.”