[ rock/pop ]
Ten years into a surprisingly sturdy career, The Walkmen have gotten awfully soft in the middle. Last year’s Heaven (Fat Possum/Bella Union), the ever-more-anachronistically named band’s sixth full-length, feels breezily, blissfully inconsequential compared to the blistering broadsides of their earlier days. But it’s hard to complain when they make it all sound so gosh-darn pleasant, tinting their clean-lined jangle with faint, nostalgic shadings of surf and doo-wop, and finding plenty of content in their collective contentment. Incidentally, by way of atonement for their cancelled Electric Factory date in October, the band will reportedly be serving homemade spaghetti and meatballs before the show at Union Transfer (fittingly enough, given the venue’s previous incarnation as a pasta haus) while sound-checking “half-assed” Coldplay covers.
Fri., Jan. 11, 9 p.m., $22, with Alec Ounsworth, Union Transfer, 1026 Spring Garden St., 215-232-2100, utphilly.com.
