THE WALKMEN Band lets a little looseness creep into new CD

One close call with success lends a new perspective.
By JOHN BENSON
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
With another tour about to begin, The Walkmen drummer Matt Barrick is taking care of odds and ends on the home front. Specifically, he's mowing his 10-foot-by-10-foot lawn with a hand push mower.
"Nobody else is going to mow it," quipped Barrick, calling from his home near Philadelphia. "It's a lot harder than I thought it was going to be."
To some extent, the thought of the percussionist laboring with a push-mower through two-feet-high grass draws a parallel to The Walkmen's current struggle from obscure garage-rock band to, well, any mainstream attention. Despite an incessant touring schedule, which has included numerous Northeast Ohio dates, the band remains largely unknown.
There was plenty of talk among music journalists postulating grand success for the band's 2004 album "Bows + Arrows." While the quintet -- which possesses a U2-meets-Television style -- did land an appearance on "The O.C.," the buzz soon waned.
It's a tough job...
So when it came time to record the follow-up, the outfit took its time in the studio, hoping to craft something new and different. Instead, it found the process of songwriting arduous. The eventual result is the recently released "A Hundred Miles Off," which still possesses a distinct Walkmen mood, albeit delivered with a slightly different presentation.
"It's a less intense record and overall, it's sort of more a solid record," Barrick said. "We were writing things a little bit differently and that might have changed the way they were writing. It has a little bit of a looser basement tapes kind of feel."
Point of view
The drummer points to lead single "Louisiana" as encapsulating the mindset of the band on "A Hundred Miles Off."
The mariachi-driven, calypso-inspired track was one of the hardest for the band to write. So considering the uphill struggle the group has endured, could "A Hundred Miles Off" be a do-or-die record?
"No, we're pretty happy," Barrick said. "We never expected for things to blow up or anything. I mean that would have been nice. But I don't know if that's ever going to happen."
What remains to be seen is whether The Walkmen continues on with its cult following or makes inroads to become something more. The five piece performs Tuesday at The Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland. Perhaps a good gauge of the band's success will be how tall Barrick's grass is when he returns home from the road.
Barrick said, "Hopefully (something will happen with) this record. But I've been doing it for a long time, so you get used to it."
Considering song ideas are already in the mix for the band's next album, the future of The Walkmen appears to be creatively bright with one goal in mind.
Said Barrick, "We're just trying not to do the same things over and over again."