The Walkmen

New York City’s Jonathan Fire*Eater may have gone down in flames shortly after the release of the band’s ultra-hyped major-label debut in 1997, but organist Walter Martin, guitarist Paul Maroon and drummer Matt Barrick rose from the ashes and lived to rock another day — and with considerably more success. Rebirth came after a fortuitous teaming with singer Hamilton Leithauser (Martin’s cousin) and bassist Peter Bauer, who had just emerged from the breakup of the Boston garage rock band the Recoys.

The newly formed Walkmen debuted to encouraging reviews with 2002’s Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone, but it was the follow-up, 2004’s Bows & Arrows, that catapulted the band into the big time with the radio hit “The Rat.” Two years later, The Walkmen returned with both A Hundred Miles Off and Pussy Cats, the later an off-the-cuff, song-by-song remake of Harry Nilsson’s brilliantly ramshackle, John-Lennon-produced 1974 album of the same name. The band’s most recent release was last year’s You & Me, which The Guardian hailed as “intimate, intense and beautiful.”

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