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The 5 Coolest Things About Hamilton Leithauser’s Cafe Carlyle Residency in Manhattan

The singer-songwriter and frontman for The Walkmen began his sixth and longest residency at the legendary jazz and cabaret venue in Manhattan.

The cocktails are strong and top-shelf — not a White Claw or PBR in sight; the wine list, ambitious; the menu is filet mignon and poached island salmon; and jackets are required. His opening night set included “Isabella,” a song about a permanent party girl; “The Stars of Tomorrow,” about a strange encounter that he and his daughters had with a Polish woman on a Long Island, NY beach; “Ocean Roar,” a tribute to his late friend, the singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Richard Swift; “The Bride’s Dad,” a bittersweet tale of a deadbeat dad drunkenly toasting his daughter after crashing her wedding; and “Here They Come,” about a man avoiding relationship problems by hiding out in a movie theater all day. Fans of “1,000 Miles” and “In a Blackout,” from his 2016 collaborative album with Rostam Batmanglij, I Had a Dream That You Were Mine, were not disappointed, and he ended his set with his abstract realist masterpiece, “The Garbage Men,” in which, “All the playboys dance on the blacktop like a swarm of flies.”

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