The loves of your life / Hamilton Leithauser.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

With the Walkmen and on his first two albums after that band went on hiatus, Hamilton Leithauser collaborated with some of indie rocks' brightest lights. On The Loves of Your Life, he continues that trend, but is working alone. Along with all the singing and songwriting, Leithauser produced the album and played everything on it, but unlike many one-person projects, it never feels insular. In fact, The Loves of Your Life is often looser and freer than any of his previous solo work. Where Black Hours and I Had a Dream That You Were Mine sometimes felt like fading memories, this album is all about the life in its title. Leithauser's songs burst with the joy and vibrancy of experiencing different kinds of love, and how their presence continues to be important, rather than something to stow away in the past. On the bustling "Cross-Sound Ferry," the old times and the present rub elbows in the form of old friends and young family; on "Wack Jack," the ache in Leithauser's voice when he sings "Won't hurt you anymore/But I still keep your picture lying in a drawer" feels universal. The Loves of Your Life blends his musical past and present just as fluently. There's still a hint of his work with Rostam Batmanglij in the album's free-flowing sound, especially when Leithauser revisits the dream doo wop of I Had a Dream That You Were Mine on "The Stars of Tomorrow" (somewhat tangentially, The Loves of Your Life's literate, comfortable but not complacent vibe echoes the feel of Vampire Weekend's first album without Batmanglij, Father of the Bride). Of course, there are still echoes of the Walkmen in Leithauser's music, particularly on "Til Your Ship Comes In"'s rattling, reverbed stomp, but he continues to take that sound in his own very personal directions. The album's earthy, largely acoustic palette suits the grounded yet rollicking nature of songs such as "Here They Come" and "Isabella," where breezy pedal steel and harmonies hark back to the country-pop of the late '70s and early '80s. Similarly, Leithauser's songwriting feels more intimate and immediate without losing any of its poetry. He begins "The Other Half"s soulful pop reverie with a line worthy of a novel: "I could hear your knuckles on the walnut boards." On "Don't Check the Score," a sweetly roundabout way of telling someone close to him to be happy with the way things turned out, he drags out each word of the lyric "You left your lipstick kissed into a paper cup half-filled with ginger ale" like he doesn't want to let it go. By the time The Loves of Your Life closes with the joyous "The Old King," Leithauser stretches his music into a wide embrace of the past and present that's all the more impressive because it feels so lived-in and genuine. ~ Heather Phares