Day 13, The National - Boxer

This project is intrinsically flawed. It is not conducive to writing reviews. Even though I go through an album twice at bare minimum, the fact that I am shoving gobs of new music into my ears every day on a crowded, loud, and miserable city subway doesn’t give certain albums a chance. First and foremost, it is simply hard to hear some lyrics. Second, after spending an entire day listening to and writing about an album, I am thrust into a new one with barely any time to enjoy what I had been hearing or decompress and ready myself for what’s next.

But it still holds water. When hearing a song or album for the first time in the real-world, it comes to you quickly and unexpectedly, like when a buddy pulls you aside at a party, throws a pair of headphones on you and plays 30 seconds of his new favorite track. We are expected to make a judgment, even here. The initial reaction to this new-music-bum rush will decide whether or not you listen to the album again, whether you like the artist, whether you think your friend has whack taste, etc.

I have a friend who hits up all the hot music blogs every day to see what is what. He’ll have two windows open on his computer: Itunes music store and whatever blog he is taking advice from. He’ll read a music blurb on the blog, then find the album on Itunes, click on the second song, listen to the 20 second sample, then the seventh song sample, and then decide if it sucks or if he should get the album. And honestly, he is not a complete moron for this. There is a lot of music out there, and how can anyone really decide for themselves what is going to get us off? Although this guy tries, nobody truly ever does. In fact, when review writing used to be an art and an authority, people trusted their critics. And best of all, we had all the guess-work done for us. Now, with instant access on the internet and armies of cranky, pretentious, know-it-all bloggers (I am very much included in this), then who do we trust? We pretend to trust ourselves, but what will a 20 second clip really teach us about the music? But I am not saying that our generation’s music listeners are lazy. I think the opposite. We have become over-active in our search for new pleasures. We don’t have to take a critics word for it anymore, because we can easily go online and find some obscure band to fall in love with/hate on our own.

Last week, my girlfriend, Holly, brought up an interested point. She is a fiend for NPR’s science/sociology program Radio Lab and recently listened to a program on how we process music. Apparently, there is an entire area of our brain dedicated to processing new sounds. This area is extremely active in some people, and less so in others. So off the bat, there are certain people who are more likely to enjoy new music. The conclusion of the study proved that no matter what, people are more likely to enjoy music after they become familiar with it and learn to process the new sounds. So, is twice or three times through an album really enough to grant a review? Probably not, but since nobody these days really takes the time to sit with an album for weeks on end, this is the most true-to-life way to write a review, albeit not the most accurate.

But the real question is whether it is our duty to give every album its due time and listen to it until we can claim we are comfortable enough with it to make a “worthy” judgment. My answer: no. You don’t sit in front of a painting for 6 hours a day for two weeks before you make a judgment; you walk into the gallery, look up and say “hmm, yeah, I don’t dig that,” maybe you come up with a few good reasons why, and then you move on. You don’t watch a movie 15 times before you say whether or not you like it. But unless you’re writing a 50 page thesis on the thing, art shouldn’t be that academic anyway. It should be beautiful.

There was a reason that I opened today’s entry with this discussion. On the subway home to Brooklyn from hanging in Central Park outside the Simon and Garfunkel tribute concert, I was telling a buddy my thoughts on the album of the day: Boxer. He loved the album and the rest of the band's catalog, and hoped I felt the same. I said I was felt luke-warm on it, and found it kind of subdued. His response was, “You just gatta give like, at least 10 more listens. I didn’t like it at first, either.” This is a very common response when trying to prove your favorite band to a skeptic. (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to convince someone that Joanna Newsom’s voice “grows on you.”) But is it really my fault if I don’t want to give it 10 more times? If this is an album that you have to learn to love, then is my twice-through criticism worth a dime?

I agree that Boxer is a georgous album with lush rock-and-roll textures behind a mysterious and melancholy singer. But the lyrics, which are well written and relatable, get lost in the singers lack-luster expressions. I have a hard time believing in a vocalist who sings about his emotions as if he were giving a 10th grade algebra lecture. The melodies box themselves in a short range of notes, which limits their diversity. The album is very sleepy, even though most of the songs have a driving rhythm. The drums save the album from falling into a coma. They kick the band into a higher-gear than the music achieves on it’s on. Just listen to “Squalor Victoria” and you will know exactly what I mean.

The album is very well produced, too. There is a lot of ambient noise which fills up space to make their sound come off much larger than it actually is. Listen to my favorite song on the album, “Start a War,” and try to count the instruments. I can really only hear drums and few guitars, but there are about 20 other sounds going on in the background which I cannot identify. It’s a little bit of a cop-out for a band to make up all these sounds in the studio, but this tactic has been around for years, so there is no point arguing now. But regardless how you feel about the way the sound was made, there is no arguing that it is a beautiful, ear-gasms inspiring, effect.

So no, I do not love The National’s Boxer, but perhaps that’s just because my “new sounds brain-area” is undeveloped and I need to give Boxer more time, right?

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