Walter Martin - Arts & Leisure (2016)

Walter Martin (co-writer, lyricist and multi-instrumentalist of the Walkmen) follows up 2014's much-loved and critically acclaimed We're All Young Together , with Arts & Leisure, a collection of songs that take inspiration from Martin's years of world travel as a musician, his younger days working in art museums and what he refers to as his 'shaky grasp of college art history'. The inventive use of drums and percussion, conversational lyrical approach, and trademark vintage instrumentation that Martin brought to the Walkmen are employed to wondrous new effect on his first big production since the band split. Martin's years of behind-the-scenes writing have left him well prepared for this inspired new chapter.

Whether he's making prank calls from the switchboard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, admiring the high-back chairs in a tearoom in Glasgow, or casually dismissing all eighteenth century European art during a museum visit, Martin's stories have the familiar warmth of a conversation with an old friend. While offering a perspective that is distinctly modern, Walter Martin's Arts & Leisure is rooted in an old tradition and serves as a reminder that there is still sublime power in the marriage of great music and great storytelling.