The National "Boxer"

I promised myself that I would not like this album, due to all the hype it got. It seemed a little too cool for me. But friends and journalists I respect kept suggesting it and I picked it up with a Christmas gift card, because then- even if I hated it, I still just bought it with a gift card.

It really hasn't left my player since Christmas. And I've said this before, but the best albums are ones that you can't stand at first and you begin to fall in love with little bits that you hated at first. There was one song that had me from the start, even before I bought the album. A friend put "Racing Like a Pro" on a mix CD for me and I felt like it told me my life.

You're pink you're young you're middle-class
they say it doesn't matter
Fifteen blue shirts and womanly hands
you're shooting up the ladder

Your mind is racing like a pro, now
Oh my god it doesn't mean a lot to you
One time you were a glowing young ruffian
Oh my god it was a million years ago

Sometimes you get up and bake a cake or something
sometimes you stay in bed
sometimes you go la di da di da di da da
til your eyes roll back into your head

This bit from "Slow Show" is how I feel at the end of a work day:

I wanna hurry home to you
put on a slow, dumb show for you
and crack you up

And I just like the psychedelic side of lyrics like this from "Gospel":

hang your holiday rainbow lights in the garden
I'll bring a nice icy drink to you

And that's just it. It's Matt Berninger's lyrics that make the album. To tell you the truth, the music (instruments) is a blur of mid-range frequency stuff that just swirls behind the vocals. Piano and guitars, but nothing memorable. That is, besides the drums that are quite like U2's "WAR" era drums a la "Sunday Bloody Sunday". And it finishes like a Cormac McCarthy book: The world is a bad place and we're probably near the end. Beautiful.