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album: Boxer
artist: The National
label: Beggars Banquet / 2007
score: 79
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by Tim Mathiesen
The opening track begins with quiet piano. After a couple measures a Leonard Cohen-like voice enters with a simple melody. "Fake Empire" is a beautifully catchy song that builds but never overpowers the listener. The entire album is like this. Taking cues from the darkness of Joy Division, the simple melodies of The Smiths and the vocal delivery of Nick Cave, The National took the independent world by storm with their third album, Alligator, and follows it up with this breakthrough album, Boxer.
Where The National succeeds the most is in the fact that these songs are structurally based on the rock and roll genre, yet the songs are so subtle and gentle that it is not, at first, very obvious. Most artists take their influences and build on them, but The National has taken their influences and strips them down to the bare essentials. They break down the genre of rock and roll and force it into the simplicity of the singer-songwriter genre. The result is very intriguing and the songwriting bridges the gap between the head and the heart.
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