100 Greatest Songs of the 00’s #63 The Walkmen – The Rat

Released: 2004

Some songs achieve the cult-est of cult statuses, the kind of profile that sounds like a four leaf clover wrapped up the Turin Shroud. But first things first: The Walkmen came from DC and were in part the exit wounds of Jonathan Fire*Eater’s ultra messy implosion, themselves an outfit that famously were once damned with the sobriquet the most hyped young group that nobody has ever heard of.

That was just bad timing though; by 2002 New York city’s revival of new wave and punk via them and of course they had amped up the expectations and A&R frenzy; it seemed you could meet anyone, and sell anything, in a Lower East Side bathroom. After the well received debut Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone was released that year it was left to Hamilton Leithauser and co. to surf a wave that many cynics claimed had already peaked, but it’s follow up Bows + Arrows followed through on their initial promise, something that hadn’t always happened elsewhere.

It’s centrepiece was The Rat, on which the quintet bottled all the swagger and energy of Let It Be era Replacements then mixed it like potion with the post hardcore chops of Hüsker Dü. Leithauser scrawled the words, like his voice was a flame thrower set on stun; everything fell in helter skelter behind, desperation, doubt and charred desire left in it’s wake. Like a cult that wouldn’t accept you as a member it was our secret at first, but then after a while, it wasn’t.