Having seen The Walkmen play recently on Governors Island in New York City, I have a fitting sense of synesthesia listening to their new album, Lisbon. It’s the feeling of pouring rain on my back accompanied by the mournful image and sound of lead singer Hamilton Leithauser giving his iconic wail into the microphone, the one where you can actually see the strain in his bulging veins. But whether or not one has a personal experience with the band, the songs and lyrics on this album have such a weathered and familiar quality that it’s not difficult to let your mind wander and bind your own memories to the ones explored here. These are ideas of collective experience – shared guilt, loneliness, and nostalgia – perhaps best seen on “Angela Surf City” where “Mine is yours, yours is yours / Life goes on, life goes on all around you.”

Most of the songs here are tethered to nature imagery (“sleepy red sunsets,” “the sky above”), and these settings are met with stories about estranged lovers, sullied fantasies, lost friendships, on and on. It’s all overwrought and expansive, but in the best way.

This narrative tone is mirrored in the soft, surfy rock and roll of the music itself. The overstated punctuation of drums is almost a reminder of structure to the wandering vocals and guitar. The catchiest song on the album might be “Blue as Your Blood,” where there is a literal gallop and even quicker guitar pulse to the song behind the languid drawl of Leithauser and a violin. There’s such a great momentum to this album that it’s a jarring feeling when the song stops for that six-second breath between tracks.

A friend told me it would make for better live listening to stand back on the beach, further from the stage, with the music washing over us. The same goes for the album. It’s a wonderful, all-enveloping experience to take off your headphones and listen to Lisbon through a set of speakers.