By now, the Walkmen’s sound is so recognizable it’s really something that they continue to surprise us. You & Me, the New York band’s fourth LP of original material, offers more of the same—vintage organs and guitars drenched in reverb, Hamilton Leithauser’s soaring vocals, Matt Barrick’s patient drum buildups—but it’s more of the same in the best sense of the term: familiar, yes, but so tried-and-true that you wouldn’t want it packaged any other way. Besides the sonic signatures, however, their latest comes off as a step forward, as Leithauser swaps the tales of boozy nights from 2004’s commercial breakthrough Bows + Arrows for more mature subjects like saying goodbye to your 20s and settling down. Furthermore, there isn’t an obvious single here like Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone’s “We’ve Been Had” or Arrows’s “The Rat” and “Thinking of a Dream I Had.” The catchiest cuts, “In the New Year” and “Four Provinces,” do deliver on the Walkmen’s shimmering downstroke guitar cool, but it’s the subtler touches that tend to stand out, like the way horns gently color the two-chord verse on “Red Moon” or how Leithauser tenderly sings, “But maybe dreaming is all a man can do” on closer “If Only It Were True.” It might take 10 listens to realize it, but this is an absolute triumph.

-- Tim Lowery