The Walkmen

When The Walkmen busted onto the scene 10 years ago, they were a hard-drinking and unapologetically hard-rocking band of twenty-somethings. Their music, while nuanced and articulate, was undeniably grandiose. (For plenty of reasons, their bombastic 2004 single “The Rat” remains their biggest success to date.) In the last five years, though, the band has accomplished what so many of their contemporaries have failed to do: The Walkmen have grown up. On Heaven, frontman Hamilton Leithauser and his crew further their exploration of adulthood with 13 tracks of meticulously crafted, intricately orchestrated, vocally driven guitar rock. Songs like “Love Is Luck” explore long-lasting love with anthemic sincerity, while the drowsy and lilting “No One Ever Sleeps” feels and sounds like a band that’s seen their fair share of late-night drives. As a whole, Heaven rides on themes of comfort, concern, and contentment with growing old. That it does so while sounding so new, though, makes it one of the band’s strongest efforts to date.