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Boxer

by

The National

 
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Boxer
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Avg: 4.5 (461 ratings)

Brooklyn group shows a little sympathy for the bedeviled.

  • We Say...

    Review by J. Edward Keyes

    A tiny, subtle diamond in a field of ten-foot neon exclamation points, Boxer, the stately, flawless fifth record from the Brooklyn group the National, draws strength from the power of suggestion. "Let's not try to figure out everything at once," Matt Berninger sings softly in the glowing opener "Fake Empire," and that line could be a statement of theme: On Boxer, the epiphanies take their time.

    Since their relocation from Ohio to New York, the National has built a career on writing wry songs that express sympathy for the bedeviled. 2003's Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers found them merging grizzled Americana with a Flannery O'Connor kind of fatalism, crafting stories about misanthropes whose dreams had dried up and whose only recourse was to blame everyone around them. Alligator, released the following year, took that same anger and internalized it, turning the gun around and tying up acrid metaphysical aggravation in thick, silvery ropes of guitar. That record was mainly about exhaustion, but Boxer is about resignation. Its title is a clever bit of misdirection: they don't mean someone who fights, but someone who confines. The characters here are either burned out or walled in, aware of their limitations but working to accept them instead of becoming incapacitated by them.

    Fittingly, the songs are coiled and quivering — no release or eruption, just a steady, insistent simmer. Sound arrives not in distinct notes but reverberations: guitars echo, organs pool, bass hums and buzzes. The jittery, insistent "Mistaken for Strangers" builds to a groan instead of a shriek and "Guest Room," which is as close as Boxer ever comes to an anthem, blots its big finish with inky smudges of bass and rolling clouds of feedback. This temperance is the album's ace up the sleeve: rather than betting their worth on one hook writ large, the songs unfold a little more with each pass. What starts out foggy and puzzling is gradually revealed to be a bounty of small, elegant moments. Drummer Bryan Devendorf is the group's anchor; his percussion is odd and atypical, strange thrilling bursts of sound that knock the songs off balance. His playing is completely counterintuitive, loaded with sudden stops, unlikely drops and improbable rolls.

    Berninger, in his early 30s, is a Tennessee Williams kind of frontman: tired of parties, hyper-aware of his own age but roaming the nighttime city anyway in the restless — and fruitless — pursuit of something more. But instead of getting bitter or nostalgic, Berninger seems to be moving toward a kind of acceptance. "Tired and wired, we ruin too easy," he sings on "Apartment Story," and the key there is the pronoun — it's not the ruining that matters, it's the peace that comes from knowing you have someone to be ruined with. Again and again Berninger finds comfort in companionship, and even when he's singing "walk away now, and you're going to start a war," it doesn't sound so much like an ultimatum as it does a sly, gentle plea to come back to bed.

    This, in the end, is what Boxer is all about: the first step after the Big Dream fails. It's a record about the implication but not the explanation, the clues but not the mystery. It's a record full of down-payment dreamers, ruined princes and glowing young ruffians who are learning to be satisfied with everything they haven’t got. They're beaten but grinning — half awake in fake empires, but waiting around to see the sun.

  • They Say...

    Review by Heather Phares, All Music Guide

    The National don't do anything radically different on Boxer, but then again, they don't really need to: their literate, quietly anthemic take on indie rock seemed to have arrived fully formed on their 2001 self-titled debut. Boxer just hones in even more precisely and intimately on the heartfelt territory the band covers, with punchy-yet-polished production and orchestration by the Clogs' Padma Newsome giving these songs an intimacy and widescreen expansiveness that rivals the Arcade Fire. The album's first four songs are among the National's finest work yet: "Fake Empire" begins as a dead-of-night ballad that echoes Leonard Cohen, then peppy brass and guitars turn it into something joyous. The brooding "Mistaken for Strangers" touches on the side of the band that could be mistaken for a more hopeful Joy Division, if lyrics like "You wouldn't want an angel watching over you?/Surprise surprise, they wouldn't want to watch" can be counted as hopeful. "Brainy," a borderline obsessive love song, shows off the remarkable, dark chocolate richness of Matt Berninger's vocals and how well they complement the band's occasionally bookish lyrics, while "Squalor Victoria" makes the most of Newsome's lavish string arrangements. The rest of Boxer is subtler, but no less accomplished, with each song supporting the other as a classic album should. "Apartment Story"'s hypnotic chug and "Slow Show"'s witty, knowing affection make them standouts, while the graceful, regretful "Ada" plays more like a short story than a song. As focused as it is ambitious, Boxer is riveting.

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