Skip to Content
Categories:

Recordings: The Walkmen – ""Pussy Cats"" Starring the Walkmen

Pussy Cats” Starring the Walkmen is a song-for-song replica of an album released in 1974 by Harry Nilsson. It’s enjoyable enough — the music is upbeat, jaunty even — with all horns and pianos and raucous drums. And Hamilton Leithauser’s scratchy Dylanesque drawl is a great match for later-life Nilsson’s. But that’s the exact point of contention: It’s all been done before. So why put time and money — they’ll be pulling the material for their upcoming tour off of this album as well — into a seemingly redundant endeavor?

Is it a joke? A simple tribute? Or does music have some intrinsic value that is re-established with every new recording or jam session or concert, even if there is no innovation involved?

Other artistic fields get away with it — some painters dedicate their lives to copying what they see in front of them as precisely as possible, and what’s photography if not the seizing of a moment that has already been experienced to later share with others? Are musicians held to a different standard? Perhaps we can forgive the Walkmen and just appreciate, maybe for the first time, the creativity of a man who died over a decade ago and its precise replication.

Donate to The UCSD Guardian
$2615
$5000
Contributed
Our Goal

Your donation will support the student journalists at University of California, San Diego. Your contribution will allow us to purchase equipment, keep printing our papers, and cover our annual website hosting costs.

More to Discover
Donate to The UCSD Guardian
$2615
$5000
Contributed
Our Goal