Zubissou Sounds

The roomArtists › The Walkmen

Where to start with The Walkmen

Start with They're Winning — Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone, 2002. That is the track sitting closest to the centre of all 25 The Walkmen tracks in Zubissou Sounds — a listening room of 14,971 tracks placed one at a time by hand, not an algorithm.

This page is not a discography and not a ranking. It describes exactly one thing: the 25 The Walkmen tracks that one person put in one room, and where they sit relative to each other. The starting point above is chosen by a rule you can check — of the 25 tracks, it is the one nearest the average position on the four knobs the room runs on. Nothing here calls any record better than any other.

The collection leans hard on one record: 13 of the 25 tracks come from Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone alone.

The years need a caveat: 24 of 25 dated tracks land in the 2000s and come from 2 records, while the rest come from elsewhere — the mark of a reissue carrying its own date rather than the music's. Read the year column below as the date on the copy in this room, not the date the music arrived in the world.

Every track is filed under indie rock; nothing here crosses into another genre.

The energy knob swings 62 points across these tracks, the widest of the four — it is the axis this artist actually travels along in this room.

25tracks in the room
3albums
2002–2012years covered
indie rockfiled under

Three ways in

The one track, if you only play one

They're Winning — Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone, 2002. Of the 25 The Walkmen tracks here, this one sits closest to the average of all of them across the four knobs the room runs on. It is the least surprising thing in the collection, which is exactly what an entry point should be.

If you want the ambient end

No Christmas While I'm Talking — Bows + Arrows, 2004. The lowest energy reading of any The Walkmen track in the room (30 out of 100). This is as far towards ambient as the collection goes.

If you want the driving end

The Rat — Bows + Arrows, 2004. The highest energy reading here, at 92 out of 100 — a 62-point swing across the collection towards driving.

Where The Walkmen sits in the room

Zubissou Sounds does not have playlists or genres you click. It has knobs. Every track carries a position on each one, set by hand when the track was added, and you find music by setting the room to a state rather than by searching for a name. These are The Walkmen's average coordinates and the range they cover.

KnobAverageRangeLow → high
mood4332–58melancholy → euphoric
energy4930–92ambient → driving
density5748–75sparse → wall
head · body4532–60cerebral → groove

All four run 0–100. They are placed by a person, not derived from audio analysis or from any streaming service's feature data.

What is here, record by record

AlbumYearTracks
Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone200213
Bows + Arrows200411
Heaven20121

Every The Walkmen track in the room

TrackAlbumYear
Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is GoneEveryone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone2002
French VacationEveryone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone2002
I'm Never BoredEveryone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone2002
It Should Take a WhileEveryone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone2002
Revenge Wears No WristwatchEveryone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone2002
Roll Down the LineEveryone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone2002
Rue the DayEveryone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone2002
Stop TalkingEveryone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone2002
That's the Punch LineEveryone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone2002
The Blizzard Of '96Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone2002
They're WinningEveryone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone2002
Wake UpEveryone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone2002
We've Been HadEveryone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone2002
138th StreetBows + Arrows2004
Bows + ArrowsBows + Arrows2004
Hang on SiobhanBows + Arrows2004
Little House of SavagesBows + Arrows2004
My Old ManBows + Arrows2004
New Year's EveBows + Arrows2004
No Christmas While I'm TalkingBows + Arrows2004
The North PoleBows + Arrows2004
The RatBows + Arrows2004
Thinking of a Dream I HadBows + Arrows2004
What's in It for MeBows + Arrows2004
HeavenHeaven2012

Near neighbours in this room

These are the artists whose average knob position sits nearest to The Walkmen's in this room. It is a coordinate match, not a claim that they sound alike.

What the open databases say

MusicBrainz lists The Walkmen as a group, from New York, the United States and formed in 2000. Its contributors tag the artist indie rock, post-punk revival and rock and indie. These are the open database's facts, not mine — you can check them against the MusicBrainz entry.

Questions

How many The Walkmen tracks are in Zubissou Sounds?

There are 25, across 3 albums. 25 of them carry a date, running from 2002 to 2012. That is the whole of what this room holds — it is one person's collection, not a discography.

Is this a best-of, or a ranking?

No. Nothing here is ranked and no track is called better than another. The starting point is picked by arithmetic — the track closest to the centre of all the others on four measured axes — and the rule is printed above so you can disagree with it.

Where do the knob numbers come from?

They are set by hand, one track at a time, by the person who added the track. They are not audio analysis and not a Spotify feature. Mood, energy, density and the head/body balance each run 0 to 100. All 25 of these tracks have been read individually — nothing on this page is running on a default.

Can I listen to these here?

Not yet from this page. Zubissou Sounds is in private beta — the room itself plays through Spotify, and 25 of these 25 tracks are matched to a Spotify ID and ready to play the moment you are in. The waitlist form is at the bottom of this page.

Get on the list

The room is in private beta — 14,971 tracks by 5,585 artists, including these. Leave an address and you go in the queue in order. No newsletter, no marketing, no third parties: the address is used once, to let you in.