Album Review: This Side Of The Island by Hamilton Leithauser

Sharp, charming love songs from The Walkmen’s front man, co-produced by The National’s Aaron Dessner The Walkmen may have reformed, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to be bereft of any of lead singer Hamilton Leithauser‘s solo material. For when the Brooklyn band went on an ‘extended hiatus’ back in 2013, it gave Leithauser the space to create four solo albums that were very different from his band, but equally rewarding. The Walkmen reformed in 2022, but (possibly wisely) they’ve refrained from recording any new music – after all, could anything beat the adrenaline-fuelled rush of The Rat? – and have so far stuck to their promise of focusing solely on performing, selling out a string of shows across the United States.

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We are now 12 years removed from Hamilton Leithauser fronting post-punk icons The Walkmen (not including their brief 2023 reunion tour), so using them as any kind of measuring stick for what to expect on This Side of the Island is an exercise in futility. Plus, he has a few solo records under his belt to use as more valid comparisons. Unfortunately, nothing on his fourth solo effort quite measures up to the expectations forged by his successfully vibrant musical history.

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Brooklyn musician Hamilton Leithauser returns with This Side of the Island, an album he’s worked on for the past eight years. Although Leithauser primarily writes and records at his home studio, the Struggle Hut, he went to Aaron Dessner’s Long Pond Studio (now famous for Dessner’s work with Taylor Swift) to complete the project. Leithauser co-produced the record with his wife, Anna Stumpf, but Dessner provided unexpected instrumentation and, in Leithauser’s words, “raised the ceiling and lowered the floor on the entire thing sonically”.

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