THE NATIONAL - Boxer (2007), listen #2
You know how it is. You’re listening to a record for the first time and you’re trying to put together a narrative, and since you don’t remember the songs all that well but are trying to have something to say, you make sweeping statements about how things be. Well, I’m going to have to slightly walk a few things back. Last time I described Boxer as basically a pleasant blur of mid-tempo soundscapes and concluded that this was basically the mode that the National operate best in, and slightly bemoaned that they’d never be the band I’d go to to rock out. Well, this listen through, “Fake Empire” played out about the way I remembered, with a great twisty piano line and a straightforward vocal melody. It’s not a different type of song than, say, “Wasp Nest,” except for the part where “Fake Empire” is actually enjoyable to listen to – it just does their thing better. So I was in that mode of expecting moody stuff and briefly wondered if the second track, “Mistaken For Stranger