The National - Boxer

When I was 18, I fell in love with a girl the summer after I graduated high school, the last summer I would spend at home. She was a year older than me, home for the summer, and would be leaving again for college in New York at the end of August. I would be leaving for Michigan. It was a doomed relationship from the start, so we never started. But we spent every day together during the waning weeks until our separation when we were the only ones left yet to leave for school. We were never “head over heels.” We never so much as kissed. It wasn’t until I drove to her house the day she left to help her pack, when she said she didn’t need help, and we said “see you later,” and I drove home, and my body ached, and I wanted to cry but couldn’t, and I wanted to explode but couldn’t, that I thought, “I was in love.” And it wasn’t until she showed up unexpectedly at my door, tears in her eyes, to confess that she didn’t like how we left things, and we held each other for 30 seconds of eternity that I thought, “We were in love.” During all of this, I heard The National’s Boxer in my head.

When I was 19, walking the Los Angeles streets alone because I didn’t have a car, wondering what I was doing with my life, wondering how things could get any worse, I was mugged and beaten. As I jumped up from the concrete to chase my muggers, my feet hit the concrete to the machine gun rhythms of Bryan Devendorf’s drum on Boxer.

So when Matt Berninger delivers, “You know I dreamed about you for 29 years before I saw you” in the song, “Slow Show,” I get it. And I want to tell him that I kind of feel that way about his newest album. I feel like every song on Boxer has always been with me, hidden somewhere on lonely streets in broken hearts, and The National comes along in 2007 with an album that knows me too well. It’s almost creepy. I mean, I’ve never even met these guys. But somehow, I don’t think I’m alone.

The National seem especially adept at sending the listener pearl diving into black seas. The good news is, there are a shit-load of pearls. So many, you might drown. 2005’s Alligator continues to reward after what must be a thousand listens on my part. Personally, I can never get enough “daughters of the Soho riots.” Boxer is no different, and yet, somehow, entirely new. Less introspection than Alligator, focusing more on the world and the people that surround them, The National create a stunningly beautiful melancholy, rife with cultural rebellion, political disenchantment, and heartbreak. Rather than surrender to Berninger’s somber delivery, the band manages to soar above, its bass, dual guitars, horns and strings creating a tangible swell in the atmosphere surrounding your speakers, amplifying and underlining Berninger’s poetry. When the bass ever so gently slips into “Fake Empire,” Boxer’s first track, it wakes the butterflies sleeping in my stomach. When the horns take over in a syncopated flutter over a distorted guitar and a chugging snare towards the end of the same song, I get scared my heart might explode. And that’s the FIRST TRACK! It actually gets better.

Both Rollingstone and Pitchfork will tell you that this album belongs to Bryan Devendorf, whose drums power and ricochet their way through songs giving everything a certain immediacy and anxiety which plays a beautiful counterpoint to Berninger’s subdued, mournful baritone. But don’t be fooled. It’s Berninger’s voice and devastatingly cryptic lyrics that keep you coming back for more. At times he bemoans the state of the country in “Fake Empire” and “Gospel.” Elsewhere, he fights the yuppie assimilation of his peers in “Mistaken for Strangers”, “Squalor Victoria”, or “Racing Like a Pro.” But he’s at his grandest when he’s in love. The three songs in the middle of the album – “Slow Show,” “Apartment Story,” and “Start a War” – paint a picture of a relationship built around insecurities, fear, paranoia, and regret. Basically every relationship I’ve ever had. At first he’s heartbreakingly sweet like in “Slow Show” when he sings, “I wanna hurry home to you/Put on a slow dumb show for you/Crack you up.” Then he’ll keep the sweet and add a touch of creepy in “Apartment Story” – “We’ll stay inside ‘till somebody finds us/Do whatever the TV tells us.” Finally, he becomes threatening in his devastation at the end in Start a War, saying simply “Walk away now/And you’re gonna start a war.” God damn right.

One of the most striking aspects of this album is how much The National is starting to sound like Interpol circa Turn on the Bright Lights. Maybe I should have seen it coming. Both bands tend to prefer city gutters and back alleys, falling out of love, rather than falling in. But I didn’t make the connection after Alligator. On Boxer, however, you get the sense that the Interpol boys are off to the side, smiling and nodding their heads. “Mistaken for Strangers” in particular sounds as though it could fit nicely on an Interpol album. I think it has most to do with Devendorf’s preeminent position in the front of the band on this album. Of course, in retrospect, a song like “Leif Erikson,” the last track on Turn on the Bright Lights, is very National-esque. This is by no means an insult. I just don’t know how I feel about two of my favorite bands starting to sound like one another.

Really, it’s of no consequence. With Boxer, The National continue their work as one of the finest bands in the world. Neither their sound nor the mood of their music deviate too much. “Abel” on Alligator remains the one odd duck anthem in a catalog of morose, isolated songs. Berninger’s lyrics can be obtuse at first, but manage to open themselves up with every subsequent listen. Pitchfork calls Boxer, and subsequently, Alligator, “growers,” explaining that the albums must be given time and space to truly appreciate them. That’s fine, I suppose, although I don’t really understand what’s not to get about either album. I loved every chord, note, and word the minute I heard them. The albums do get better with time, but that’s saying something, considering how good they are the first time around.