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This Side of the Island
This Side of the Island

This Side of the Island in Bloomington, MN

Current price: $12.99
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Size: CD

Get it at Barnes and Noble
In their solo careers,
the Walkmen
's members are big on quality control. During a time when many artists pepper their fans with new material and social media posts to stay relevant, they only appear with new music when they're good and ready.
This Side of the Island
arrives five years after
The Loves of Your Life
, but
Hamilton Leithauser
spent eight years making it (and even joked that its creation spanned three presidencies). Though this averages out to a little less than a year per song,
Leithauser
's fourth album is far from overcooked: In fact, it might be his most direct, and it's certainly his most passionate. It feels like not just nearly a decade of experience went into it, but nearly a decade of impatience as well. Its songs burst out of him: "Knockin' Heart," with its ringing power chords and roaring vocals, rivals the firepower of
's "The Rat." On his earlier solo albums,
put as much musical distance as he could between himself and his former band, whether with
Black Hours
' postmodern crooning or
I Had a Dream That You Were Mine
's surreal nostalgia. Hearing him revisit the louder side of his music on
is a real thrill, especially when he navigates it as skillfully as he does on the title track. Building from moody reflections to shout-along choruses, it reflects
's effortlessly shape-shifting songs as well as complex emotions ("It's not a beautiful country/As much as I'd like it to be").
picks up this part of his music as easily as reconnecting with an old friend; as he sings on "I Was Right," "It's a brand-new bottle/But it's filled with the same dark wine." But instead of pining for a time gone by, the album's moment is now. Even when
is missing someone powerfully on "Fist of Flowers," he's decidedly in the present. The world changed significantly as he worked on
, and its defiant festivity shines all the brighter in comparison to the dark tenor of the mid-2020s -- shambling, strutting songs like "Happy Lights" and "Ocean Roar" feel like parties in media res. The way
(who co-produced the album with his wife
Anna Stumpf
and
the National
's
Aaron Dessner
) uses classic sounds is just as vital and vibrant. The tumbling marimba, organ, and brass on "What Do I Think?" have a bashed-out punk energy, and though the backing vocals on "Burn the Boats" link the song to '60s soul, the wobbly synths around them are 21st century through and through. His lyrics are simply eloquent as always, with lines like "Cracking your knuckles with a sad smile/It gets easier every time" (from "Off the Beach") telling an entire story with a handful of words.
may be short, but it's long on heart. This is a life-affirming triumph of an album that dares to be uplifting during difficult times. ~ Heather Phares
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