The Hydrogen Jukebox: "Knockin' Heart"
A killer track from the latest solo album from Walkmen frontman Hamilton Leithauser.
Do you ever have concerts that you wish you could go back and attend again now knowing what you do now? That’s certainly the case for me—the bands I saw because my friends were going but that I hadn’t really done my homework on and thus didn’t appreciate the show as much as I could have.
One of those shows I wish I could go back and re-live was the January 12th 2011 show the Walkmen put on at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, NC. Here’s a video someone filmed from the audience.
When I went to that show, I wasn’t as well-versed in the band’s back catalogue as I am now as the group has become one that I listen to a great deal. Also heightening my desire to revisit/go back to this show was the fact that the album the band released in 2012, Heaven, was one of my favorite albums of the 21st century. If I had to make a list of my favorite songs of the 21st century, “Heartbreaker” would 100% be on there.
Shortly after that album and contributing to my desire to go back and see that show again, the band went on hiatus in 2013 (though they would reunite and go back on tour in 2023). During that hiatus, the members of the band went on to different solo projects with frontman Hamilton Leithauser’s work standing out and garnering the most attention (not surprisingly).
While Leithauser’s first solo albums didn’t measure up to his work with the Walkmen (in my eyes/ears at least), his 2025 release This Side of the Island sounds and feels in keeping with the Walkmen stuff that I really loved. Reviews of the album describe it as being direct, energetic, and melodic, all of which I think are apt terms to use.
The second single off that album, “Knockin’ Heart,” was a real standout to me and was in keeping with what many of the album’s reviewers were talking about.
This song, which Leithauser worked on with National guitarist Aaron Dessner, has that garage rock sound that really shone through on Heaven. The song is warm and catchy but also has some force to it. It’s one of those songs that could be a “song of the summer” candidate if such a thing really existed in the realm of rock and roll and wasn’t a product of a by-gone era.
Here’s how Leithauser himself described the song:
“Knockin’ Heart” is sung by an estranged, stoned lover on their way home, who is dying to get a message through to someone who is probably not listening. It is ‘I will love you for life if you’ll let me.’ I wrote and recorded it one evening and put it away for over a year. I knew I liked it, and I didn’t want to mess anything up by trying to perfect it. It was the last song I played for Aaron when we got together, and the first song he helped me work on. I’d say he raised the ceiling and lowered the floor on the entire thing sonically. He actually used a funny bass technique he said he’d used on a Taylor Swift song, which I got a kick out of. I gotta say his bass sounds fantastic. Now there are three basses on it! One of mine and two of his. That is a first for me.
I found that invocation of Taylor Swift interesting and speaks to the melodic heft and tunefulness of the song.
Both “Knockin’ Heart” and This Side of the Island as a whole make me hopeful that even if the Walkmen don’t formally reunite or release new music that Hamilton Leithauser’s solo stuff will sonically trend in that direction (as a few of the reviews pointed out, this was the first solo album he did since that reunion tour, which might have brought that sound out of him and led him to put it on the record).