The Walkmen x Etsy
Indie rock meets indie design to celebrate a new album
For their new album Lisbon, Brooklyn band The Walkmen wrote several songs during their many visits to the Portuguese capital. But when it came time to think about merch, the group looked a little closer to home,
tapping the DIY experts at Etsy. The upshot—t-shirts, limited-edition silkscreened inserts, and a hand silk-screened album poster—connects the indie music world with indie design…and Portugal.
Pittsburgh artist Andy Scott of Little Tired hand-silkscreened a three-color poster that features designs inspired by decorative Portuguese tiles. After learning that Portugal produces half of the world’s cork, t-shirt label Sheepshead designed a graphic of a circular cork cell floating over the band’s name, which they printed on Alternative Apparel shirts.
The hardcover digipack CD includes an autographed Yusuf Sevincli-designed 7″, which has “Weight On My Shoulders” on one side and “Good Days Carry On” on the other. Each record comes with a Beau Ideal Editions limited-edition silkscreen based on the patterned pavement at the Cais Sodré port and train station in Lisbon.
For the new Walkmen release, frontman Hamilton Leithauser promises, “a bunch of fast rockers and big bashers, and a couple great oddballs.” Recorded in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, the 11 songs on the album were picked from 29 that they came up with since their critically-acclaimed 2008 album You & Me.
Lisbon drops today on Fat Possum Records and on 11 October 2010 in the U.K. on Bella Union Records. Order it from Amazon or iTunes.
