The Walkmen @ Crescent Ballroom

The Walkmen didn't set out to write a "dad rock" album with their seventh album, Heaven — though that's exactly how the press perceived it. It doesn't help that the record's photos feature the band surrounded by their kids and spouses, or that songs like the high-and-lonesome "Southern Heart," the chiming "Song for Leigh," and the cresting title track all roll with an ease and ambling quality that comes from growing up and settling down. "It's remarkable how much [the record's art] shaped people's interpretations," singer/songwriter Hamilton Leithauser says from his home in Philadelphia, catching up on "some domestic chores." "We've been working music for 15 months or more, and we did this photo shoot in one day . . . five hours — but it had as much sway as any of the songs, or more [in how the record's message was interpreted]." Though the black-and-white photos of smiling babies and the nattily dressed band members informed public opinion, opening track "We Can't Be Beat" didn't do much to challenge the idea that Heaven is — at least in some part — about leaving behind the thrashing nights of young manhood in favor of a more genteel lifestyle. "I was the Duke of Earl," Leithauser sings. "But it couldn't last. I was the Pony Express, but I ran out of gas." It could be read as a poem to lost youth, but the triumphant chorus, over group harmonies (courtesy of Fleet Foxes' Robin Pecknold) suggests something more enjoyable and rare: "We can't be beat," Leithauser belts, with the same sort of exuberance that made the band's "The Rat" practically burst from hi-fi speakers on 2004's Bows + Arrows. "It was supposed to be a quiet, intimate sound, like any classic doo-wop, like The Fleetwoods or something like that," Leithauser says. "I wanted it to be first on the record, because I thought musically and lyrically it was a nice big statement."