By this time of year, I suppose most folks, magazines and blogs who care about such things would be done with their best-of-decade lists. I originally wanted to put out mine, a list of my favorite 30 albums released between 2000 and 2009, before Christmas but it turns out to be not so feasible. So indulge me as I roll these 30 albums out one by one, and who knows – or more accurate, who cares – how long it will take me to finish, but it'll be fun for my personally. And first up to bat, the dark and brooding music of The National.
30. The National
Boxer [Beggars Banquet, 2007]
The 2005 album Alligator is perhaps more representative of The National, but it is the bleary-eyed evanescence captured fully on Boxer that leaves a more lasting impression. These well-worn songs, sung in Matt Berninger’s very distinctive baritone, have the trancelike ability to evoke a profusion of conflicted chivalry, grown-up disaffection and feelings of insecurity – all drawing on the dark musings of a reluctant corporate workaholic, if you may. Boxer is an absorbing listen, albeit with a strong alcoholic aftertaste, as crisp drinking songs such as “Squalor Victoria” and “Slow Show” abound in the kind of torpid observational details that perhaps paint a familiar picture of dissipation, while in the underpinning swagger of “Apartment Story” a tired and wired Berninger manages to mumble out disarming lines about the absurdities of everyday life (“Can you carry my drink I have everything else/ I can tie my tie all by myself, I'm getting tied, I'm forgetting why”). And even if you’re not sufficiently moved by the soporific grandeur of piano-led opener “Fake Empire”, their elegant flail against oblivion (“Stay up super late tonight…”), the rest of Boxer project such an elegant sense of brooding romanticism throughout that you can’t help but give in to its after-hours sensitivity.
30. The National
Boxer [Beggars Banquet, 2007]
The 2005 album Alligator is perhaps more representative of The National, but it is the bleary-eyed evanescence captured fully on Boxer that leaves a more lasting impression. These well-worn songs, sung in Matt Berninger’s very distinctive baritone, have the trancelike ability to evoke a profusion of conflicted chivalry, grown-up disaffection and feelings of insecurity – all drawing on the dark musings of a reluctant corporate workaholic, if you may. Boxer is an absorbing listen, albeit with a strong alcoholic aftertaste, as crisp drinking songs such as “Squalor Victoria” and “Slow Show” abound in the kind of torpid observational details that perhaps paint a familiar picture of dissipation, while in the underpinning swagger of “Apartment Story” a tired and wired Berninger manages to mumble out disarming lines about the absurdities of everyday life (“Can you carry my drink I have everything else/ I can tie my tie all by myself, I'm getting tied, I'm forgetting why”). And even if you’re not sufficiently moved by the soporific grandeur of piano-led opener “Fake Empire”, their elegant flail against oblivion (“Stay up super late tonight…”), the rest of Boxer project such an elegant sense of brooding romanticism throughout that you can’t help but give in to its after-hours sensitivity.
