No Filler Music Podcast - The Walkmen: Indie's Timeless, Elevated Garage Rockers

Episode Date: June 14, 2021

From album one, The Walkmen carved out a unique space in the garage rock landscape. They did so by following a few unspoken rules. One of those was to insist on using only vintage equipment, including a decades old piano and hollow-body guitars. Add Hamilton Leithauser's vocal stylings that ranged from intense to intimate, and the result is a catalog of music that elevated The Walkmen above their peers. From the relentless rage of The Rat to the timeless ballads of their last record Heaven, we pay respects to one of the greatest indie groups from the 2000s. Tracklist: The Walkmen - We've Been Had The Recoys - Song of the Paper Dolls Jonathan Fire Eater - The Search For Cherry Red The Walkmen - Wake Up The Walkmen - My Old Man The Walkmen - The Rat (live on Letterman, 2004) The Walkmen - Woe Is Me The Walkmen - Blue As Your Blood The Walkmen - Song For Leigh This Microwave World - The Party Line This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Pantheon is a proud partner of AKG by Harman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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So your experience before takeoff is a taste of what's to come. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Conditions apply. And welcome to No Phil. the music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Quentin. Back on the mainland with me through the zoomage is my brother Travis. Just got back from Hawaii yesterday, dude.

Yeah, dude, you're looking... Feeling relaxed. You're looking... Well, you're not looking tanned, but you are looking. and sunburned. But that's going to turn into a nice golden-round tan. It's going to be nice, too. Because, Q, as you know, you and I have some Native American blood in us.

Yeah, we do. But I think it's like at 116. It might even be smaller than that. But that's what I point to when I tan very easily. I'm like, thanks, great, great, great grandparents. That's just the benefit of our lineage. Yes, sir. We tan easily.

although I don't go outside enough to tan but when I do well up here in Washington dude even when it's sunny out you can hang out all day I mean sure put some sunscreen on but you can hang on all day and you're not going to get yeah burnt but down in Hawaii dude like you're out there for 10 minutes and you're burnt to a crisp even with sunscreen yeah well you know down here in Texas Q if you remember depending on the time of year if you take a walk outside and come back 20 minutes you might I get a little sunburn. And you're going to be drenched and sweat, dude. Yes, yes.

And it's about that. It's getting that time of the year. By the end of the week, it's going to be in the 90s. But we're about to turn it all around right now, dude. There are some episodes that I go into that I am like almost more excited about just sharing the music with you than like anything else. You know what I mean? Because, you know, hey, a lot of times we'll do albums where you and I are very knowledgeable

and intimate with whatever we're talking about. So we're all in the same. Fleet Foxes, Interpol. Yeah. Yeah. But I know that you, that you know the Walkman. Everybody knows the Walkman. Love the Walkman.

But I don't think that I dove as deep into them as you did back in the day for one. Because I know like you owned like physical CDs of theirs, right? Yeah. I owned Bowes and arrows. And actually I think that was it. I grabbed the one that had the rat on it and the song that, actually, no, I was going to say the song that played us in, but that was not on bows and arrows. That was on their first one.

But yeah, I was a big van, but I actually got probably heavier into them, like, but then the last two years. I went back and listened to a good portion of their discography. And, like, yeah, so that's what we're doing today is, like, we're going to bounce around. Basically, we're going to do, you know, a couple of tracks from their early stuff, and then a couple of tracks from their, we're going to sandwich it. Their first and second record, and then their last two records, a song from each. and then we're also going to play

we're going to play the audio from their live performance of the rat on David Letterman because that's one of the greatest performances ever. So the Walkman, this is our second episode in the, I guess, early 2000s indie garage rock vein.

Yeah. We started with French kicks last week, which side note, dude, I want to give a shout out to our guest producer that has produced a few of the last episodes when I had my family in town a couple weeks back and I was in Hawaii. Shout out to you, brother. You're talking about me?

I'm talking about you. Usually I'm the one that pieces the episodes together. I wasn't prepared for this. Well, that's because, you know... I don't lift a finger, dude. I don't look to finger around here. Yeah, I know. I think everyone knows that by now, dude.

it used to be a back and forth I'll piece together in episode one week you'll do the next but we noticed that like they would be different because we're two different people and we you know producing skills are a bit different yeah so to remain consistent

you know once we got picked up by the network we're like let's just you know I'll do this you do nothing you just sit back and do your coding you know because your your work just, you know, so important. You know, a busy guy, you know. That's what I hear. That's what I like to say.

That's your excuse for everything. I'm busy guy. But yeah, dude. Yeah, you did good, man. Thank you. You did good. If you have a keen ear, you'll be able to tell that it's, that it's, you know, it's slightly different.

I'll make edits that you may not have made or leave things and you probably would have cut out, stuff like that. Dude, let me tell you something. And this is a tangent, but it's a whole other fucking world. When I'm listening to an episode that I have no idea. what the end product is. Yeah. And it's dude,

that's every week for me. I'm biting fingernails, dude. I'm like, am I going to sound like a, is he going to leave something in where I sound like a real dumb dumb? No, dude, I'm not going to treat you like that.

Because, because for those of you who don't know, we sound like dumb dumbs every week. But I cut out a lot of a tomfoolery. Yeah, this is not live, obviously. Right. This is far from it. Yeah.

And it helps that we're, you know, several thousand miles. away from each other because we've got our vocals nice and isolated so it helps us produce polished you know turd just yeah okay polish polished turd it starts as a turd every week it starts as a turd and then it turns into like the turd emoji where it's it's still a turd but it's smiling back at you at least it's smiling yeah anyway so uh all right so so we're going to cross off another band from our definitive bands that we have to cover a list, which we started

way back when in 2018 when we started the pod. I know the Walkman's on that list. Yeah, I believe Bose and Arrows is on that list as an album that we wanted to talk about. Yeah. So were they, did they originate in New York like all the other boys did from around the 2000s? They did. Okay. Yes, they did. They formed in New York. But they have an interesting backstory. So like, These guys in two separate ways, I guess, have been playing with each other since like middle school. In other words, like, and the reason I say in two different ways is that two of the band members, the lead singer, Hamilton, Latehouser, and Pete. Doesn't he go by The Big Porter? Hamilton, the Big Porter.

Not that I've read. Okay. But, yeah, Hamilton Lighthizer and Peter Bauer, the bassist slash organ player, were in a band together since ninth grade. They've been playing music together since ninth grade. And then the other three guys had been in a band together since seventh grade. That's pretty cool, actually. Which is crazy, right? And those three guys and Hamilton and Pete were in separate bands.

before they did Walkman together. So like, it's kind of interesting because both bands were trying to do the same thing, the garage rock thing, right? And they were both in New York at the same time, like separately? I want to say that Boston is involved somehow. I want to say that James, so James, not James. Oh, actually, that's his real name. Hamilton, his birth name is James Q, but he goes by Hamilton.

Hamilton was born in D.C. I want to say that he, yeah, okay. So he was in a band with Peter called The Recoys, and they formed in 1996 from in Boston. The other three guys, and let me name them, Paul Maroon, Matt Barrick, and Walter Martin. So Walter is Oregon's keyboards. Paul is another guitar player. and Matt Barrick is the amazing phenomenal drummer that we'll talk about in creative detail.

He's amazing, yeah. So it's cool that they had all played together. Yeah. You know, and parts of them have played together in other bands. Like talk about like when they all came together. It's cool that, you know, a few of them are familiar with each other's styles. And then the other part of them, they're familiar with their styles. So they come together.

I mean, they must have been just crushing it from the beginning. inning, man. Yeah, well, that's the interesting thing. So we're going to play a song from each of their bands. Nice. Because you're going to be able to hear how the pieces are there, right? But in, you know, so you can kind of really see how these two bands, when they, when they come together, become the Walkman, right? So the band that the other three guys were in, they were called Jonathan Fire Eater. And they had actually had some success. They got signed to a, you know, a pretty big record label. It was like a part of the DreamWorks umbrella or something like that.

And they were like... DreamWorks, dude? Yeah. It was... I thought they only did animated CGI movies. You would be wrong, Q. It's a... Yeah, you know, it's one of those things where it's like it's a record label.

A David Geffin's nascent DreamWorks music label. Oh, Geffens, dude. Yeah. Anyway, all under the same umbrella. So they were, you know, they put out of like an EP and then they signed a, and put out a full-length album, and then they dissolved. And, you know, the recourse, Hamilton's band didn't have the same kind of success. And you'll hear that.

Like, they definitely sound very different. But they didn't get much success with their release. And, like, they had tensions with the band and stuff like that. And so, you know, the two bands came together, you know, out of the ashes. It's one of those timing things, too, where, like, the recourse fizzled out. And Jonathan Fire Reader fizzled out at the same time. And so in 2000, that's when the two bands were able to to form. So let's jump right into those two clips here because basically what you're going to hear is a,

you're going to hear Hamilton and his badass voice on the recourse. But the backing band is just not that impressive. Dude, what it tells me is like, dude, a drummer is so fucking important. You know what I mean? Hey, man, you're preaching to the choir. When you have a shitty drummer, it brings the whole band down, dude. Drummer's the backbone of the band. Yeah.

Planned and simple. No joke, dude. But anyway, so yeah, let's just jump right into this here. So, again, this is Hamilton, which is the lead singer of the Walkman on vocals, guitar, and then Peter Bauer on guitar. That's the only two members that, I guess, are relevant because those are the two members that go on to form the Walkman. But anyway, what's interesting. Actually, you know what? there is something a little bit more interesting. How many times can I say interesting?

Another guy, Hugh McIntosh, the drummer of the recourse, actually went on to be the drummer for the French kicks. Isn't that crazy? Coming around full circle? Yeah. But he wasn't the drummer on the record recovered last week, so we're not completely full circle. But anyway, there's a lot of interesting connections that I'll talk about throughout the episode. But anyway, so let's play a song here. This is the first track off of the Recois self-titled record called Recois. This song is called Song of the Paper Dolls.

It's a cool song. Don't get me wrong. But I was actually kind of taken aback by how much his voice and his singing style reminds me of the lead singer for that band Ice Age. Remember them? No. I brought them to the table as sidetrack. Okay. Are they a relatively new band? Their first album came out, I believe, in, oh, in 20, hang on, stupid, stupid Spotify. Why wouldn't you put this in order? They've been around since like the 2010s. Okay. But very similar style. Not so much

Walkman style, but that style. Yeah. Well, like, here's the thing about Hamilton as a lead singer. like throughout this episode too because I bounce around quite a bit from like his his career right because like by the time they put out um this last record the last song that we play by them today they'll have been a band for like 10 years as the walkman yeah so like you're gonna get to hear like a pretty full range of like his spectrum right like i'm a big fan of that style of singing well he don't know how much he's changed sort of has like like you you can pull different singers, you know, out of his vocals, like, depending on the song and the style that he's going for. Like, to me...

Maybe like some Mick Jagger a little bit? I mean, that's the thing. I feel like, I feel like his voice is like an amalgamation of all the greatest rock singers of all time. And you'll hear later, like, there are moments where he sounds kind of like Rod Stewart sometimes. And he gets compared, interestingly enough. I never heard this, but people compared him to Bono from U2. from a very specific era, like war era, you two. Okay, I can see that.

And you'll hear it, you'll hear it. But anyway, like I said, he just has all, he has this amazing voice, right? And you heard it here, and that was really the only thing that really stands out. Right. Because the drumming was boring. Nothing special. Yeah, they probably would have, I mean, they did fizzle out, but yeah, I don't know. Nothing great would have come out of that band.

Nothing would have happened with them, yeah. Yeah. The band that was supposed to catch on was Jonathan Fire Reader, which was the other three. you guys. So what you're going to hear, I think you'll agree with me, Q. This song sounds like early spoon, as in like, as in, what is it, Telephono and the other EP that came out. And series of sneaks, stuff like that, like early spoon, big time. Even the, even the, the phrase that he kind of repeats, cherry red, just you can almost hear Brad Daniel sing in this phrase. But anyway, listen to this. So this is a, this is the,

the other band with three guys that went on to Forma Walkman. And yeah, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this is off their first EP and this is the first, the first, the first track off of that album. And it's called the search for cherry red. I love it, man. Great song, Rick. I can see how, like, like, they just, they need to just come together. And it's going to be killer. Well, that's the thing like...

Talk about foreshadering, am I right? Compared the Jonathan Fire Eater band, the backing band, right? Compared to the recourse. Because that's the key part of the Jonathan Fire Eater puzzle that comes together and joins forces with Hamilton and the other guy, the other guitar player. I feel like that guy had similar singing style. Yeah. A similar singing style to Hamilton.

Not as compelling and not as, like, powerful. Well, let me just give another shout out to Ice Age because, if you liked those two bands, you will love Ice Age. My favorite album of theirs is from 2018. It's called Beyondless. Check them out. And they are going to make an appearance on one of our 2021 end of the year list because they just dropped an album called Seek Shelter. Anyways, if you like this style of music, check out Ice Age.

You'll love them. Well, it's worth noting that the recourse and Jonathan Fireator, this stuff came out in the 90s, the late 90s. So like, you know, that's kind of that same like shock, you know, and surprise when, when, like you said, when you first listened to Telephono and you're like, wait a second, when did this come out? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But yeah, garage rock, right? That's what that sound is. Yeah.

And so when they formed when, you know, these two bands dissolved and they joined as the Walkman, right? Oh, dude, one more thing I wanted to say just because, you know, if you were a fan of Spoon in the. late 90s and you were hanging around Austin, you may have seen this band called This Microwave World. Dude, I forgot about them. I loved those. Open for them. Well, that reminded me of that Jonathan Fireator kind of reminded me of their sound.

Yeah, dude. They had a good song. God, what was it? The party line. Let's play it as the outro, dude. That's fine. I don't have anything planned for the outro. So, yeah, they, when they formed as a Walkman,

they didn't want to do the garage rock sound and they they have certainly put their spin on it and you'll you'll you know they still get called a garage rock yeah but um they do this thing where they use and are dedicated to using vintage equipment and you hear it in the sound especially from the piano player that he uses like a like a 50 year old 100 year old piano cool I don't remember which one it was but he like he uses this old piano so like they had these rules these unspoken rules that they lived by rule number one All equipment must be vintage. Rule number two. However valuable the instrument, it should be carried in a cheap, flimsy bag. Dude.

Rule number three, no guitar stands because an antique fender looks much cooler propped against a speaker. That's amazing. I love it. I don't know if these are actual rules that they live by. Are these rules like handwritten and framed somewhere? I don't know. I just saw it in an interview thing. But anyway.

Maybe like scrawled on a napkin. They were unspoken, though, cute. Oh. These weren't written. These were unspoken policy. So these are just things that. Okay. Rule number one certainly was lived by is no, you know, all equipment must be vintage.

So like. Well, I think my favorite rule is number two. Yeah. Cheap bag. That's just the, you know, part of like the thrift store kind of look that a lot of these bands had, right? Yeah. But, yeah. So like the guitar player had a 59 Rickenbacker 360 Capri, which was a main famous by

John Lennon at the peak of Beatlemania, stuff like that. So in other words, even if it's a valuable vintage guitar, like don't preserve it, like bang it up even more. Yeah, exactly. That's awesome, dude. Let's play some tunes, man. I'm ready for some Walkman. All right.

So you heard the recourse, you heard Jonathan Fire Eater, this is what happens when the important elements from those bands come together. Dude, I can't tell you how excited I am right now, man. Dude, get ready. You know, I like to paint pictures, dude, while we're about to. Yeah, really, you're getting better. at it. I've always been good.

Anyway, yeah, so let's listen to, we're going to jump to their very first record. This album is called Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone. It came out in 2002, and we're going to listen to a song called Wake Up. It's the simplicity of it that makes it so powerful, man. Yeah, and that's part of what they were going for. And that's why they used vintage equipment. that's why they followed like even, you know, the way that they, in the studio, you know, they would use like a low-tech recording process.

Like basically the way they described it is like they just pointed a microphone at an instrument. That's what he said. And like, you know, he said that it gives it like a, this is, I don't remember who this I think it's Paul, the guitar player. He said, you know, it gives it like a spacious underwater feel. especially in the first album you hear it. So like this stuff that we're in right now is where you're going to hear that.

And I love the way that like the low end, like the bass. Yeah. Comes in on that one. Well, you can hear that piano front and center. And it sounds like maybe a 50 to 100 year old piano dude, not sure which one. Yeah, I don't. I could look it up. But there's an old piano.

It's all I got now. You can tell. And you can tell the way that it's recorded out. Like they stuck a mic up to the piano. Yeah. For sure. And like, you know, they even said, There's even a quote from one of the guys that said, like, we do things better when we do it quick.

So that's kind of playing back to what the French kick said last. They didn't say it last week. They said it years ago. But I was talking about last week with, like, let's not be concerned about obsessing. That was one of the things that the Walkman guys said that because they all know each other so well, it would take them forever to do things because they would nitpick each other every little thing, which probably happens with every band, right? because you're like, it's like a family, you know what I mean?

It's like a five-way marriage, you know what I mean? Yeah, and you're rehearsing these songs, you know, like during band rehearsals, you're just practicing these songs over and over. So by the time you get into the studio, yeah, dude, you're going to be like, no, we did this a little bit differently last week when we were practicing. Yeah. But yeah, that's cool. So what's interesting about this record is that like the way that they recorded it,

basically when they formed, three of the members, the guys from Jonathan Fire Reader, borrowed money from like friends and family to construct a rehearsal space for the band. And then they tacked onto it a 24 track recording studio that they would record other bands in too. But it gave them as basically the way they said it's like we would be rehearsing in the space. And then we could just turn around and hit record and start like playing around with the song. You know what I mean? Cool. So a lot of this stuff came out of those like sessions and whatnot. So that's kind of cool. But anyway, One more thing about this record before we made to the next one.

I just wanted to talk about the song that played us in. We've been had. You may, if your memory goes back far enough, you may recall that song from a Saturn Ion commercial. Oh, yeah, I remember it, dude. They're like driving through like a suburbia, right? Yeah. It was a Saturn Iron commercial.

So basically they said that they needed the money for the car ad. So, you know, how many times have we, have we, as music fans accused our favorite bands of selling out, sometimes they just need the money. And they use the money to pay for the next record, which is what we're about to talk about, bows and arrows. So anyway, we've been had as one of my favorites, I love the way that song.

The reason I chose it as the intro for this episode is because the way that it kind of just smoothly kind of fades in with that piano and stuff is just fucking amazing. It's a perfect song for a commercial. I mean, no wonder they did it. And between, we've been had and everyone who pretended to like me is gone.

Yeah. You pick up on that style that he was doing at least around that time where like, I don't know, he kind of like fluctuates in tone with each word. Yeah, it's great. I fucking love it. Which, and if you don't, if you don't do it right, like it's going to sound silly. Yeah, it's going to. And you have to have, you know, a good band backing you up to have the confidence to sing like that, really.

That's why when you hear him singing with the recourse, it doesn't have the impact. Now, I will say that I think the songs are structured and written better as the Walkman. But I'm just saying, you really do need a good backing band, obviously. Yeah. It goes without saying, but I'm just saying, like, a great singer is nothing without great musicians to back them up, right? Totally. That's like the perfect showcase of that. All right.

So anyway, we're going to talk about the next record here, Q, bows and arrows. Now, this is the one I'm most familiar with. Yeah, this is the one that put them on the map. It was featured. They had Little House of Savages and the Rat were featured on the TV series, The OC. And they were actually featured in the show as a band in the background of a scene. Oh, cool. Performing Little House of Savages.

Anyway, so this is kind of the record that put them on the map. The funny thing is like, I didn't watch the O.C. when it came out, but it sure seems like a lot of the bands I liked were. featured on the OC because remember obviously Fan of Planet's the theme song but like I want to say we've talked about other bands featured on the OC anyway that was obviously whoever wrote or picked the music for the OC was listening to the same stuff that we were listening to you know what I mean right or they were just being appointed to feature like indie bands you know but anyway so we're going to play the rat in a second and we're going to watch the video of them performing it on David Letterman. But let's listen to another track first because the rat is, that's the climax, dude.

You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. And then we're just going to walk it down from there. So, all right, we're going to do a track here. So again, we're jumping to Bowes and Arrows. Bows and Arrows came out in 2004. Again, this is kind of the album that put them on the map. And, you know, most people are familiar, became familiar with him because of this record, including myself. All right, so this song is called My Old Man. Do we need to state the obvious, dude? Casablancos. Yeah, man.

Who did it first? It's hard to say. I was about to say, I was going to say the same thing. But I was going to go in the direction of like, isn't it weird? It's almost like there's something in the water and New York, you know what I mean? Yeah. At this time. And he also had a slight distortion on the recording of the.

vocals just like the strokes yeah but that's probably like and the strokes did this too like with the the recording process to make it sound vintage you know what i mean and make it sound older the main like similarity is and the guitar too let's say the guitar and the drums too i mean it all kind of this this could totally be a stroke song totally but yeah between like hamilton and julian is really like it's that lazy vocal delivery you know yeah yeah uh and it works so well with this with this style of garage rock. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I was going to say the same thing. And that's what I was talking about, like, his vocals, like he does so many things with his vocals, right? And sometimes you'll hear Bono from you too, and sometimes you'll hear some Casablanca's. By that time, 2004, obviously,

the strokes have made it by then. So could he have been influenced by Julian a little bit? Yeah, absolutely. You know what I mean? But here's what, here's where Hamilton, excels and Julian never reached this height. We're going to talk about the rat queue. We're going to play this clip and what I would encourage you to do if you're at home and you're able to pull up a video, go to YouTube. Do not click on the Conan O'Brien performance because it is not as good. They killed it on the Letterman performance. So that's what we're going to play. Dude, this is like top 10 performances for me. Me too. I will never forget this performance. I go back to this.

I've gone back to it several times throughout the last decade plus. It's incredible. I haven't seen this in... I watched it yesterday, dude. A long time, dude. It shook me, dude. It shook me. All right.

So like I said, follow along at home. Go to YouTube and search for Letterman, the Walkman, the rat, if you want to type it all out. Find the performance. He's in a black shirt. and I would say watch along with us here. I'm going to play the audio. We're going to watch the whole video, you and Meku. We'll fade the audio out a little bit before just so we don't have CBS knocking on our door or whatever.

But yeah, watch the whole performance at home if you're able to. Don't pull up YouTube while you're driving. That's what I'm saying. But if you're in front of a computer, look it up. It'll change your life just like it did mine. I don't know if we saw this live on the TV. it's possible. It's very possible, man. We were watching a lot of late night back then. We preferred Conan over Letterman, that's for sure. Yeah. But anyway, all right, here we go.

We are about to nerd out and watch this video all the way through. This is the Walkman on Letterman playing The Rat. Shook. Shook as I say, dude. I'm shook. Dude, imagine being in the audience and not knowing anything about the Walkman. Yeah. You showed up to see. I don't know, Ben Affleck or something, whoever the guest was. You showed up to see, man, what's the name? Paul, what's the name of the piano player, the house? Oh, Paul Schaefer.

Yeah, you show up to see Schaefer and then your freaking jaws on the floor after that performance, man. The thing that gets me, even when he listened to the actual recording from the album, too, it's when he screams beating on the wall. Yeah. It just like, especially when you see him yelling it into the microphone. It's just so powerful. Dude, and the way he holds the mic is dope.

Everything about it. And like every single member of the band is worth watching too. And that's what really makes the performance memorable. The guitar player is doing something really cool with the, he's got this effect. Dude, the bass player, like, to the way you kind of just like slowly like, I don't know, bobbles his head back and forth kind of just like swaying back and forth. It's just really, I mean, just so memorable, dude. Things that we have all been missing the last year because of live performances, you know,

know, not being there for us. But yeah, something about the performance, the drummer, obviously, come on. Yeah. That's a damn near impossible beat to keep going for, you know, three and a half minutes live like that. Yeah. You know, it's funny, like one of the top comments is, I bet right after this song became a popular single, the drummer realized he was going to be sore for the rest of his life.

Because think about it, they have to play that every show that they did. Yeah, that's a workout, man. Yeah. He's insane. But anyway, yeah, it's just, like you said, it's one of the most memorable performances that I've ever seen on a late-night show, or at least from, you know, Letterman, hello. Letterman's been on forever. He's had countless amazing acts.

Mega stars. But as far as from that era, I feel like this is just a standout song. And this was number 20, I should say. This song was number 20 on Pitchfork's 200 greatest songs from that decade. So number 20, that's a pretty big deal. That's pretty big. Anyway. Dude, and that, like, this is a perfect example of, of like, I mean, just how exciting it must have been.

And, you know, we can remember this. You know, being a fan of rock in the early 2000s. Yeah. Because it was, this was what happened after grunge kind of thing, right? This was the next, the big wave of what became kind of popular. And it's cool that you can see all their vintage equipment like I was saying. That's just another hollow body guitar. He always exclusively played like hollow body guitars and stuff like that.

Yeah. Anyway, the reasons I wanted to split this up into their first two records and then their last two records is that now you're going to see a big shift. And I haven't listened to any of this stuff, dude. Okay. I'm only familiar with those two. Great. Let's take a quick break. We have either two or three songs left.

I'm saying two or three because it depends on if you want to hear three more songs because there's two. I went back and forth on this next record. So if we have time, we'll do two more songs. But three more songs. Anyway, let me just read a couple of quotes here. Here's a quote from NPR's Song of the Day. So they were the Song of the Day on June 2006. The song, by the way, I'm not playing.

The song that was the song of the day. If you're curious, it was another one goes by off of their record, a hundred miles off. That's a record that we're going to skip over. But anyway, they were the song. song of the day on NPR, and the person who wrote up the article, she said, the Walkman's members create an airy, room-filling, guitar-driven racket when needed, but they also craft ballads with loving attention to detail, sprinkling in delicate bells

and wintry piano, and his vocals float above the din, ranging from bruised and beaten to raging and intense, giving the Walkman a tone of introspection not often found in the work of their peers. And that's the thing. Like the Walkman transcended the garage rock sound. And you'll hear that in some of the next stuff that they did. Because they started, this was talking about 100 miles off. They started to create more like lush, really open sounding ballads and stuff like that.

Yes. Okay. You know what? I think I am familiar with one of those ballots. But yeah, I'm intrigued. Well, now we're going to skip ahead, though. We're going to skip ahead. And that's the thing.

like, you know, they are constantly writing songs, constantly honing their craft and stuff. Basically, they say whenever they're done with a record, they've usually got another one, another song already ready, you know, ready to go for the next record. Like, they're always writing songs. They're always, like, improving and getting better. And so, like, there's even a quote, I don't know if I had it written down what they were talking about how, you know, when you're younger, you tend to sing about angerer things, and then you sort of mellow out.

And that's kind of reflected in their records here. But yeah, we're going to skip ahead to Lisbon. It came out in 2010. So now there's a six-year difference between bows and arrows and then Lisbon. And I'm going to play two tracks, Q, if you'll permit it. Of course, brother. It's just a music-heavy album here, or music-heavy episode. I'm all about those, dude.

I'm going to play a song called Woe is Me. True Hidden Jim, dude, between the singles. Yeah, dude, I love that song. What a great song, man. Yeah, but that's a, that's a matured mellowed out Walkman Q. Yeah, man. Especially coming off the rat, which is like probably their most aggressive song, which isn't surprising because like it's one of the most aggressive songs from that era.

Dude, I mean, he's beating on the wall, dude, you know? Yeah, he's pissed about something. By the way, the funny thing is about that story is like about the, the drum beat. They were just fucking around, and he was just fucking around the drum beat. And then they're like, let's craft a song around that drumbeat because that's insane. And so they did. So like, if it wasn't for the drummer, just screwing around and being like, what's the craziest drumbeat I can come up with?

And that was it. And then they wrote a song about it. So I think the lyrics and everything is all matched to the intensity of that drum beat, which is cool. Yeah, dude. But anyway. But yeah, what was me? Like, it's a great, great song. And it's a, when they got to this era, the last two records, they started writing these

songs that just felt like timeless. When you listen to these songs, they just, they feel like they could come out of anywhere. Yeah, I was thinking that when I was hearing it. Yeah, it sounds almost like from the, I don't know, 60s. You know, I always default to 60s, but it's that 60s style guitar, yeah. And that's part of, you know, what they worked toward with, you know, that's why they used vintage instruments. They pulled influences from like Warre Orbinson and like Cash, Dylan.

Dude, and you know what, man, I feel like that's like kind of a defined. characteristic of early 2000's garage rock. It all had that retro sound. But it always had some like some aggressiveness to it, some like distortion and stuff like that or some punk. It was like that kind of with punks type stuff, right? There's a quote here from Paul Maroon, which is the guitar player and he plays the old piano.

He says, we're sort of stuck in a time warp. I don't think we use anything that we couldn't have used 40 years ago. we could be from any era of rock and roll. And he's like spot on, right? For sure. But anyway, so this next song, this is why I was torn. I probably rearranged these songs and picked five or ten, you know, between 10 different songs I was trying to play.

I was obsessing over what songs to play for you guys. But I really wanted to play this other one. So we're going to. Because this is an example of the Cash influence, the Johnny Cash influence. Oh. Specifically, Cash's backing band is what it's, what everybody is kind of pointing to. They were called the Tennessee 3.

And you're going to hear, this song is going to have a kind of a classic country sound to it from the backing guys. And it's great. So we're going to listen to this song here called Blue as Your Blood. Again, this is off of Walkman's album, Lisbon.

I love their progression and style. Yeah. Do they still have moments of, like, anywhere in near the rat? No. The rat is unmatched, dude. And again, that was their second record. And yeah, trust me, I looked, because I tried to find another example of the rat, but like, you know, that was climax, man, like you said. They're not writing songs like that anymore. Yeah. As far as, like, yeah. That's the peak. The things that they're, it's just the peak as far as like, you know, if that's, if you want to see the Walkman do the screaming and the fast-paced stuff, but I think the

songs that they craft later, like the last two songs we played, are just more sophisticated and like more, like, you know, more timeless and more, like I said, they elevated the garage rock sound, in my opinion. Like, they just became the Walkman, right? There's like, he has such a defining voice and the, and the guys behind them, like, they're just really, like, top notch, you know what I mean? Dude, yeah, they, like, you know, this is, there's no, like this is no surprise to people that listen to No Filler. I love simplicity and I love repetition. Yeah.

And in music. And they do it so well, dude. Yeah. And not in a way that's like lazy or whatever. No. It's very effective because like they do a little bit of layer building, you know? Oh, and I'm all, dude. That's number three for me, dude.

Simplicity, repetition, and layers. dude, that's my jam. Yeah. Give me that all day long. So you may have heard like some things, some, some, some strings and stuff in the background. That's one thing that changed on this record. They brought in a whole bunch of additional musicians. So on this record, Lisbon, you're going to hear trumpets, cellos, trombones, violins.

And that, like, it had kind of like a galloping, kind of like you, that's that Johnny Cash. That's the Johnny Cash thing, yeah. What was the name of that band? The Tennessee Three. The Tennessee three, yeah, that galloping, like, horsey. style marching kind of beat. Yeah, and the title Blue has your blood. And like what he's singing about is, I guess, just a heartache and stuff like that classic

love song type of. Sure, sure. Heartache. But yeah. And, you know, I don't know if you heard this, but I certainly did. He gets compared to Dylan a lot. And I think I heard some of that. I've been listening to Nothing But the Walkman for the last three days.

So like, there are songs where he sounds just like Dylan. It's not like it's just like Dylan, but I feel like this song that I just played is sort of like that a little bit. Yeah, a little bit. Anyway, we got one more song. Yeah, NPR World Cafe called him a frustrated Bob Dylan. His voice sometimes sounds like a frustrated Bob Dylan, whatever that means. But anyway, yeah, we got one more song here. This is their last record, right?

So I don't think they meant for it to be their last record. Actually, that's exactly what he said. So I'm going to quote Lighthouser here. He says, it wasn't made to be the final Walkman record, and who knows if it will be. It still is. So at least he's dangling that carrot, though, for fans. They might come back together. He says, but by the time we finished it, a lot of kids had been born, and a lot of people had been, had moved all over the country.

So I do remember that when we called it heaven and decided to put pictures of our families on it, it felt like let's show who we are now and give an honest representation of our lives and that we had come pretty far. Nice. So they ended well, right? They, like he said, lots of kids had been born between then and Lisbon. And, you know, some of the songs are about family and stuff like that. So again, like this is, you know, if you want to hear more of the rat, you're not going to get it. It's a different five dudes.

People grow, you know what I mean? And, you know, we always talk about that as fans. So, like, sometimes we're just like, can you just give me more of that one song that I really like? And we're like, why don't you sound the same that you did 10 years ago? Well, it's like, because it's a totally different person. Dude, that reminds me of that great quote from, I think it was the lead singer from Foles. Oh, yeah. Like, it's like looking at a photograph of someone from 10 years ago and asking them why their haircuts different now.

Yeah. Like, why do you look so different than you did in high school when I last saw you? Why have you aged so much in 10 years? It's called time. You know, it's the same thing. Yeah. So anyway, I've got a great song to end us here, Q. And again, think timeless ballad.

This rock song can be written at any time, dude. It's timeless. This song is called Song for Lee. I feel like that's a great, like, ending to the Walkman, dude. That's that sound. Yeah, that sound. Yeah, exactly. And what are you singing about too? He's no longer singing, well, at least in this song, he's not singing about heartache or anything like that, you know? He's singing about singing to his girl. Yeah. Patience will keep you alive, you know. And it's that idea of like, I mean, I just like these

lyrics, rock to the rock, roll to the roll. That's just what life's all about, dude. He's like, hey man, my gun still shoots, my bird still sings. He's just, you know, content, you know. I love it. And that's what, you know, that's what happens with, hopefully that's what happens when you get older, you know? I hope so, man. That's all you can ask for, really.

Find someone to love, settle down. Maybe you have some kids, maybe not. But, yeah, I just love, I love that song. It's a beautiful song. Yeah, man. And like I said, it could have, could have came out 50 years ago. Really, it could have. They're using nothing but vintage equipment that they could have used like like I said 40 years ago, 50 years ago.

So anyway. Great tunes, dude. Really good stuff. Yeah. Go back and listen to, I'd say go back and listen to Lisbon and Heaven, their last two records. I'm definitely going to, man. I haven't heard any of this stuff. They're great.

But yeah, I got a few more fun facts for you here, Q. As I promised in the beginning, there's some fun connections that happen, mostly around Fleet Fox. I saw the name Fleetplexes jump out of me quite a bit. After Walkman disbanded, if you will, the crazy amazing drummer joined the Fleetplexes as a touring session drummer. Really? Now, that would be something if he was buying the kit when I saw them a few years back, because that is by the time that Mr. Father John Misty, whatever his name is, was no longer the drummer.

So, like, it could have been, maybe. Dude. I don't remember who was buying the kit. And then here's another fun fact, Q, and it's going to blow your mind. So Hamilton, the lead singer, he's done some solo work, basically. Ever since after Heaven, basically, the Walkman disbanded, he starts putting out solo work. He put out work last year, or maybe it was earlier this year. Maybe both.

I think he's been putting out some new records. Anyway, he recorded it mostly at home, right? And so, as he put it, working entirely from home meant, oh, well, this is the person who wrote the article, working entirely from home meant that Lighthouser had to be creative when he couldn't quite fulfill all the roles himself. This, in turn, led to a musical baptism for his two daughters, who sing on the record and have since to go on to feature on the new Fleet Fox's album. Oh, my God, dude. I knew it was coming. I knew it because you said, record it at home.

Yeah. Last year, tied to Fleet Fox's, that's amazing, dude. And I looked it up. So, you know, we actually talked about this record. You can go back and listen to our episode on it. It's Fleet Fox's record that came out. Was it this year or last year? Time is a fucking, it's all the same.

So I came out last year. It's called Shore. So, yeah, if you want to hear Hamilton Lighthousers to girls, Georgiana and Federica, on the new Fleet Fox's record, listen to track one or track nine, which is amazing, dude. I love it. And that's one of the things we talked about

with what was so cool about that record was how many people were able to collaborate with Robin Peknold and the rest of the guys on this record, even opening it up to like, I think it was like Instagram followers or something like that. Yeah, yeah, it was something like that. Yeah. But how cool is that, dude?

Yeah, man. One of those special moments that came out of 2020, for sure, in the pandemic. But yeah. I think the Fleet Foxes and the members of the Walkman kind of go way back kind of thing. They probably tore together. I know the Walkman opened for Kings of Leon at some point because I read that. That would have been a cool show.

I haven't seen The Walkman live, so it wasn't one of the Kings of Leon shows that I saw. And we saw like three of them, I feel like in our high school days. Any time they came through, we saw them. So yeah, that's that, man. Good tunes. Great tunes. really I think I think like I've been saying

the Walkman sort of they're sort of in their own in their own building you know what I mean as far as I think their body of work you know what I mean

you compare it to the strokes or Interpol even for sure the rest of those bands to me kind of fizzled out right but I feel like up into their last record

they just got better and better in my opinion the Walkman yeah well I will say the strokes made a comeback in my mind with the new abnormal. Well, if the Walkman ever put out a new record, we'll see. Oh, yeah, that'd be awesome.

The Strokes definitely turned it around. It took them long enough, but they did. Yeah. And that's just coming from two, you know, very old, long-term strokes fans. But yeah, that was great, dude. Good tunage. You know who I want to do next? And I'm going to run this.

I'm going to steer this boat. Okay. And I've been wanting to do this band since we started. started the show. Let's do some hives, dude. It's time for the hives. Interesting. Okay.

You want to talk about just a fun band, man? Yeah. And the outfits, they put, and he, he clearly adopted the Jagger Strat. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah, man. Let's see. So the album I'm thinking of is called Barely Legal. It came out in 97.

I think. Wow. For starters, I'm going to try that one out. I might do what you did today and just kind of, Bounce around. Bounce around. But the one of theirs, the album of theirs that I fell in love with was Tyrannosaurus Hives, which came out in 2004.

Walk, Idiot Walk, yeah. Oh, such a good song, man. That was another one of those just crazy fast-paced, like punk garage rock bands that came out of. Actually, I think they're like Swedish or something. Really? I don't think they're from America. Anyways, we'll get into that next week. As we continue on in this early 2000s garage rock train.

And so, you know, I was listening to music the whole time on the flight. Five and a half hours to Hawaii, dude. And, you know, I haven't talked about these AKG headphones in a while. But let me tell you, dude. I thought it was impressive when I had a three-hour flight earlier this year, where my ear, you know, my ears were just, it was like I had, cloudy pillows pressed up against them playing music for me. Same goes for this five and a half hour flight dude.

Just so comfy. That's saying something because I have a different pair of headphones cute. And I wear these for maybe two or three hours at a time without taking them off. Like that's probably the longest I'll go without taking them off like during the day. Yeah. And like yeah. At some point my ears start barking. The only thing that was hurting around my ears was my ears was my.

mask. Yeah. I wasn't it, you know, you can't take that off on the flight. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, man,

these headphones are just something else in the comfort level. They sound great. They look dope. And I'm talking, of course, about the AKG

podcaster essentials kit that they have graciously provided us with. I've got their dope microphone that comes with the kit. It's a USB mic. It's a beauter

sounds great. That's why I'm coming in buttery smooth, dude. And you can buy these, the microphone and the headphones separately. I'm not going to give you too much more details. You can find more info on it on the AKG website. We've decided that this is like, if this kit was around in 2018 when we started this podcast, we both would have bought one without thinking twice about it. No doubt. Yeah. It's a great value, really great sound from the mic, super comfy, great sounding headphones. it's a no-brainer. Oh, dude. And I, man, I almost left these headphones in Maui.

Dude. The TSA checkpoint guy must have, like, moved my headphones into another bin when he was, when we were going through security. Because, you know, out of sight, out of mind. I grabbed everything out of the two bins that I ran through security. And I wasn't thinking about the fact that my headphones weren't in the bin that I had them in originally. So they were left like you.

So I moved forward. Dude. And we went, so we were doing some last minute like, uh, you know, let's buy some souvenirs for, you know, people at Sarah work with or whatever. So we were just walking around an airport souvenir shop. And through the, through the PA, they said, uh, if you left your headphones and security, we'll hold on to them for you to luckily I was listening, dude, because I wasn't even thinking about it because I, I put the headphones around my neck.

Yeah. And they're just chilling. there, you know. And dude, I cannot even begin to describe how upset I would have been if I left those headphones in Maui, man. So I just booked it back to the security, dude. And luckily they held it for me, man. I would have been devastated. Dude, that's, yeah, that's super fortunate. Yeah. The, for one that I could hear the, the announcement, too, I was paying attention. Right. And you guys were still there. Yeah. And we were still there because we, I, I, I always go to the airport with at least an hour to spare, dude.

I'm just that kind of person. Yeah, me too. So, yeah, we were, you know, just taking our time. Anyways. That is, again, AKG podcaster essentials kit. Give it a look-see if you're thinking about jumping on the podcast train, you know. It's a no-brainer. Do it.

So that's it, huh? wrap this puppy up dude when are we going to do another what you heard episode after the hives and then after that the kings of convenience newest record should be out so we could pause on the garage stuff talk about the latest kings of convenience and then come back into the clientele nice dude that sounds perfect yeah sweet so we got the roadmap through the rest of this month and into july i think yeah yeah that should take us to july sweet all right well, you can find this on Twitter if you want to shout out at us or tweet us or whatever, mention us, hashtag us.

At No Filler Podcast is our handle. Tell us what you want us to talk about. If you're a big fan of this era of rock and roll, tell us what band you want us to talk about. Yeah, and if you are familiar with our What You Heard episodes, it's our monthly mixtape where we each bring five songs to the table, just songs we've been listening to in-between recordings. We do one a month, and I'm going to give them a proper shout-out on the upcoming episode, but we've got a listener that shared a couple albums with us that they really enjoy.

And, yeah, I'm going to play one of them for one of the songs from one of these albums as an outro on our next What You Heard. So if you have a song or an album that you really dig that you've been listening to lately, send us, you can email us, you can tweet us. You'd be like, hey, give this song a listen. I think you'll dig it. And if we do, we'll play it on our What You Heard episode. It's that simple.

It is that simple. And yeah, we're also part of the Pantheon podcast network. That's pantheonpodcast.com. And like you, like you were talking about earlier, we would like to thank AKG for sponsoring the show and the network. And we're going to close with a really pretty random. random, very obscure. I would probably say if you caught Spoon on this tour, that's the only time. I think it was the Kill the Moonlight tour, dude.

Oh, man. I think it was killed the moonlight. Those are the days. But I can't imagine too many people are familiar with this record. This was a band that opened for the opener of Spoon on a tour that we saw. But yeah, just another example of a band from that era making that sound. You know what I mean? Hey, they still got their MySpace page going, dude.

Do they? Yeah. God, that's probably when they stopped. Like, they stopped probably, you know, they didn't have to worry about Instagram, you know, because they were dead by then. It's all gone, dude. I don't think any of these photos still work. Myspace is a goddamn wasteland, dude. Yeah, why don't they just kill that site for real?

Just kill it, man. Just kill it. Somebody's making money off of it. Otherwise, they would have been dead. Anyway. Anyway, so this is a band called This Microwave World, another, I mean, very obscure, but really, great. They had some cool song. They put on a good show.

Yeah. They were awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Another garage rock band from that era. They were out of Austin, Texas. I didn't know that. Yeah, dude. That's why they opened for Spain. Yeah. I mentioned that earlier, brother. Yeah, and we're going to fade out with a song of theirs

called, what was it called? The Party Line. Yeah. The Party Line. All right, and that's going to do it for us today. We will shout at you all next week. Thank you as always for listening. My name's Quentin. My name is Travis. You all take care.