The Walkabouts: Roots and Branches

The Walkabouts’ formal full-length debut came four years into their existence, a good example of steady woodshedding via earlier EPs and tapes paying engaging dividends. While See Beautiful Rattlesnake Gardens on first blush may simply seem like an engaging indie folk-rock album of its time, there’s both steely bite in the overall performances and arrangements and, in Carla Torgerson and Chris Eckman, strong vocals that already showed their lyrical and singing talents well on songs like “This Rotten Tree,” “Glass Palace” and “Feast Or Famine.”

The Train Leaves At Eight is in ways a very atypical Walkabouts release, the only post-1991 studio effort not featuring either Michael Wells or Terri Moeller, but this spiritual sequel to Satisfied Mind, exchanging that album’s focus on generally American songs for specifically European ones, is also one of their most remarkable. While acts like Neu!, Jacques Brel, Solex and Scott Walker have a wider fame, it’s the selections of more regional legends like Luis Llach and Mikis Theodorakis that make this string-swept and moody collection all the more intriguing.

“I keep crashing into parked cars” sings Carla Torgerson as the opening line for “Lazarus Heart,” the first song on Ended Up a Stranger, and the music, feeling more tense and direct than had been the case on Trail of Stars, signals a similar sense of stakes being raised. Meantime, the hope-chasing “See It In the Dark” was one of the Walkabouts’ most exultant songs in a long while, down to the horn section. As a whole, Ended Up a Stranger kept the general Walkabouts feeling of dark elegance going, with the concluding title track being a moving, haunted lament.

On their second album for Sub Pop, the Walkabouts proved that one of the great American bands was hiding in plain sight, with the opening Carla Torgerson-sung “Dead Man Rise” being a tight as hell combination of vivid rock and roll, a hint of classic r’n’b and country-touched spirit all at once. From there Torgerson and Chris Eckman deliver another set of killer songs, with guests like Natalie Merchant on “Where the Deep Water Goes” and Brian Eno singing and adding synth on the yearning Eckman-sung “Train to Mercy” showing who knew what was up.

Torgerson’s 2004 full solo effort was a quietly remarkable record, with Greek band Sigmatropic as the main backing ensemble and bandleader Akis Boyatzis as coproducer, plus numerous other friends as guests such as Bill Rieflin and Walkabouts associates Fred Chalenor and Nancy Wharton. Working mostly with songs cowritten with Michael Willet but also covers of Pearls Before Swine and Laura Veirs, Torgerson, in fine voice as ever, explores intriguing ground throughout, including the mesmerizing, nearly ten minute long jam “Dreh Es Um.”

With Nighttown the Walkabouts built on their Devil’s Road success to fully dive into smoky nightclub feelings that absolutely were in line with a late 1990s vibe among such acts ranging from Portishead to Nick Cave to the Tindersticks, moody as hell and with just the right approach to orchestration courtesy of Mark Nichols. Arguably Glenn Slater’s keyboards had never been more important on a Walkabouts album, while Chris Eckman and Carla Torgerson’s singing throughout conveyed suppressed fire on songs like “Follow Me An Angel” and “Harbour Lights.”

On their followup to Nighttown the Walkabouts formed a new partnership with a key producer: Phill Brown, already famed for his engineering work but at that time especially praised for his role in the last Talk Talk albums. There’s a sense of those albums’ almost tactile presence on songs like the stellar opener “Desert Skies,” another Carla Torgerson-sung tour de force. The haunted, lush elegance of their late 90s work continues here, feeling like a return to America under dark heavens on songs like “Straight to the Stars,” “On the Day” and “Last Tears.”

For the second album in a row the Walkabouts started off with a sharp punch of a song, with both Carla Torgerson and Chris Eckman singing “Fuck Your Fear,” simmering with images of destruction and unease in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq War. On Acetylene, with Michael Wells returning on bass for the first time in years, louder rock and roll energy replaced the elegant moods of the stretch of albums beforehand. Compositions such as “Kalashnikov,” “Devil in the Details,” “Whisper” and “Have You Ever Seen the Morning?” burned brightly as a result.

For their second 1993 album the Walkabouts turned to covering some inspirations and doing so with their exquisite skill. Many American heroes got the nod, including the Carter Family, Patti Smith, Gene Clark and Charlie Rich, the latter graced with an astonishing duet with Carla Torgerson and guest Mark Lanegan. Australia figures heavily: having long taken inspiration from the Go-Betweens, Chris Eckman delivered a stirring take on Robert Forster’s “The River People,” while Torgerson did a heartbreakingly lovely turn on Nick Cave’s “Loom of the Land.”

Chris Eckman and Carla Torgerson’s debut studio effort as a duo wasn’t simply the two of them as on the live album Shelter for an Evening, with numerous guests making appearances including Walkabouts bandmates, R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, the Young Fresh Fellows’ Scott McGaughey and, on two tracks, “Velvet Fog” and a cover of George Jones’s “Take Me,” the Tindersticks, a band perfectly simpatico with the general Walkabouts approach. But Chris and Carla remain the center of it all, with songs like “Sleep Will Pass Us By” showing a stark beauty.

While not her formal solo debut, Carla Torgerson’s collaboration with Mark Nichols, the Seattle-area musician who had done arrangements for various Walkabouts efforts in the 1990s, was her first album not done in collaboration with Chris Eckman, reflecting their separation beforehand. Created as a score for Sam Shepard’s play of the same title, the duo’s work here is often spare and atmospheric though with the occasional burst of feedback, strings and rhythm, Nichols’s voice providing a different, reedier resonance in contrast to Eckman’s huskier rasp.

Jointly dedicated to the then-recently deceased Arthur Lee and Grant McLennan, the final studio album Chris Eckman and Carla Torgerson did as a duo is their most lush and warm in many ways, recorded in Eckman’s new home city of Ljubljana, Slovenia with many local musicians. The core duo once again play many instruments themselves, and from the stirring, aching opener “At the Twilight’s Last Gleaming,” one of Torgerson’s best vocal performances ever, it’s a beauty. Standout songs include “Long Slow River,” “Rising Backwards” and “Whatever It Takes.”

The combination of the Walkabouts’ Chris Eckman and the sharp surf-derived sounds of Croatia’s Bambi Molesters as The Strange was one of those good ideas out of the gate, as their 2004 debut handily demonstrated. With Andrej Jakus adding further pep on trumpet on various tracks and Phill Brown holding things down on engineering, Nights of Forgotten Films has both zip and spy-movie mood, Eckman’s singing bringing a lived-in intensity with ease. A couple of covers close it out, including a solid romp through Echo and the Bunnymen’s “Villiers Terrace.”

By the time of Devil’s Road, the Walkabouts weren’t getting American releases on any kind of regular basis, having found a greater response to their work in Europe. But that was well rewarded thanks to their commercial breakthrough in Germany in particular with “The Light Will Stay On,” a dramatic string-swept Carla Torgerson vocal effort that rivaled the atmosphere and passion of prime Lee Hazlewood. It was far from the only standout, as songs like the Chris Eckman-sung “The Stopping-Off Place,” “Christmas Valley” and “Forgiveness Song” all showed.

While the Transmissionary Six returned to sporadic recording in the early 2020s, this compilation serves as a good introduction to their initial run together, as Terri Moeller and Paul Austin created a string of enjoyable albums that, much like their main bands the Walkabouts and the Willard Grant Conspiracy, only gained cult appreciation in America. Moeller’s understated, quietly emotional vocals anchored explorations into drowsy psych/folk, country/classic rock tinged grooves and an atmosphere of easygoing musical energy.

The Walkabouts confronted the spectacle of what grunge’s commercial breakthrough had done to their scene and town on one of their most fiery numbers, “Grand Theft Auto.” But New West Motel in general was much more than that, showing the band well on its way to claiming its own dark-shadowed space in what could later be called Americana, with song-stories like “Jack Candy” depicting a landscape of lost souls and desperate measures, all while the music suggests escape and possible solace, somehow.

Eckman’s first full solo album signaled what would become the focus of his creative milieu going forward, beginning to exchange Seattle for Europe, in this instance Lisbon, Portugal, though still working primarily with a number of Pacific Northwest musicians like Tucker Martine, Kevin Suggs and Steve Moore. There’s various nods to Portugal throughout from the title on, including “Fadista” and the concluding “Sonhos E Sombras,” while musically the feeling is understated, some louder rock moments surrounded by space, delicacy and contemplation.

Chris Eckman and Carla Torgerson took a slight turn on their second studio album Swinger 500; while the moody stateliness familiar from the late 1990s Walkabouts carries over, there’s also unexpected choices of instruments and arrangements suggesting experimental edges, with both credited for synths and loops as well as more familiar choices. Once again various guests take a bow, notably guitarist David Immerglück, and songs like “The Good News First,” “Mercury Rising” and “Fear” add to their overall canon of excellence.

Backed at various points by his regular rhythm section of Žiga Golob and Blaž Celarec plus a variety of guest performers, including co-producer Alastair McNeill, Chuck Johnson and Chris Cacavas, on Where The Spirit Rests Eckman audibly sounds the veteran songwriter he is, the rough edges of his voice a complement and balance to much of the album’s hushed, late-night-in-a-quiet-roadhouse feeling. “Early Snow” sets a vivid, ruminative tone from the start; further songs like “Drinking in America” underscore the sense of hanging on as one can.

The self-titled debut album by Dirtmusic’s combination of musicians — Chris Eckman, Chris Brokaw and Hugo Race, each familiar from their main bands like the Walkabouts, Come, and the Bad Seeds, makes a striking statement about the importance of a good ensemble of talented performers. Playing a variety of  instruments throughout, with Brokaw handling percussion along with Race, the trio perform a series of elegant, often folk-tinged songs, feeling like a good gentle jam session. Eckman’s first song, “The Other Side,” is a real beauty, while Race’s “Sun City Casino” and Brokaw’s “Summer Days” also stand out.