killmoms

Unmagnificent lives

When we were born, we were blank slates. We yearned for essentials—food, sleep, care. The extent of our dreams was limited only by what we didn’t know, and in our sponge-like state we soaked up everything around us. Being an adult was a goal that, like everything else, we acquired. By the time we knew how to give it a voice, the desire to be “grown-up” had little to do with being older or larger or more capable beings. It was about freedom: the freedom to stay up late, to watch as much TV as we wanted, to eat candy all the time, to buy whatever we desired. To satiate our desires. To consume. In our first three or four years we were molded into future consumers by a consumption society, the dream of adulthood tarnished at the outset.

It is this theme—the disillusionment with modern adulthood and all its trappings—that is central to The National’s fantastic 2007 album Boxer. Where Ween was willing to laugh about it in “Your Party,” Boxer serves as the comedown that reminds us that no, it’s really like that. Frontman Matt Berninger crafts a lyrical landscape that is crushingly honest and delivers it in a resigned baritone set against a backdrop of staccato guitar, bass, piano and relentless percussion whose velocity belies the album’s morose outlook.

In fact, nearly every aspect of this album seems to evoke the schizophrenic contrast of “full-but-empty” lives. The music alternates between optimistic, positive harmony and slight dissonance while the lyrics remain brooding. This contrast is summed up in the first two tracks. The positive, piano-driven hook of “Fake Empire” suggests a fist-pumping sing-along while Berninger delivers resigned pleas: “Turn the light out, say goodnight / No thinking for a little while / Let’s not try to figure out everything at once.” Then, after a lush outro featuring a chorus of brass, the band turns menacing on the off-kilter “Mistaken for Strangers,” and the lyrics turn nigh-accusatory: “Well you wouldn’t want an angel watching over / Surprise surprise, they wouldn’t want to watch / Another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults.”

Even the album’s positive moments pull no punches—Berninger acknowledges that we can find happiness despite its sources’ transience. On the testament-to-modern-love “Apartment Story” he sings “So worry not / All things are well / We’ll be alright / We have our looks and perfume on.” Yet this same materialism is bemoaned two cuts later when we find two struggling lovers “Here, here in the guest room / Where we throw money at each other and cry ‘Oh my!’” Even our pursuit of happiness sometimes devolves into living vicariously through the (assumedly exaggerated) happiness of others, as on “Green Gloves:” “Get inside their clothes / With my green gloves / Watch their videos, in their chairs.”

Sonically the band falls into somewhat familiar territory, evoking bands like Interpol and Bloc Party while adding their own distinctive touches, primarily piano and brass. The aforementioned “Fake Empire,” “Apartment Story” and “Guest Room” maintain driving, positive momentum. On their darker tracks (“Mistaken for Strangers” and “Squalor Victoria” especially), the percussion comes to the forefront, pushing along bent chords and uncomfortable progressions. For most of its length, though, the music serves as a bed for the record’s potent lyrical themes rather than vice versa.

Berninger’s world—and by extension, ours—is a place that has trained us how to fuck up our lives, how to attempt self-reliance despite our own unreliability. It’s our adulthood, devoid of the meaning we assumed would be there when we arrived. Boxer is an album that documents, even in our warmest moments, our dismay at its absence.

Filed by matt at March 3rd, 2008 under Music