Happy 15th Anniversary to The National’s fourth studio album Boxer, originally released May 22, 2007.
I thought I knew what I was I doing. I’d lived a year in Manhattan, after all. A 29-year-old California transplant drinking in her dream city—I felt on top of the world.
Except I was sinking. Yes, just “another uninnocent, elegant fall / into the unmagnificent lives of adults.”
My first year getting to know New York City was nothing short of revelatory, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of my newfound entanglement. But after being situated in a prewar, doorman co-op in Midtown East’s secret, secluded Tudor City (with a predominantly septuagenarian population, I might add), I was ready to do what every New Yorker does—hustle my way to that next better thing. Something bigger, cheaper, nicer.
The truth is: I failed on all three counts. With less than a week remaining on my lease, I shivered through the streets of Manhattan, braving hive-inducing (0 degrees Fahrenheit?!) chill before finally chancing upon a first-floor apartment on the other side of Midtown, a Hell’s Kitchen walk-up, which came with a hellish broker’s fee—15% of the annual rent for an apartment I found myself. (No, I’m not still bitter, why do you ask?)
My movers dropped my speakers. My bed didn’t fit inside the “junior bedroom,” so was naturally tucked into the kitchen. And, as I settled into my sleeping bag on the cold hardwood floor that night, a roach scampered past my head. As another roach darted out, I lay in the darkness and cried. I’d made a huge mistake, and spent a fortune doing it. Was this what grown-ups did?
Those first couple months were rough, but that cozy, 395-square-foot apartment on West 49th Street would end up becoming my unequivocal favorite of four Manhattan apartments. Turns out a bed near your fridge isn’t entirely inconvenient—and 5am dance parties betwixt a coatrack and stereo are simply quintessential, twentysomething NYC living.
As I somersaulted into my sophomore year of my Big Apple existence, The National’s fourth LP Boxer swung gracefully beside me. We punched away at adulthood together, eagerly shirking dull realities of quotidian corporate life, punting obligations ‘til the morrow, and gleefully albeit worriedly warding off the inevitable (“We miss being ruffians, going wild and bright / In the corners of front yards, getting in and out of cars / We miss being deviants”).
Oh, I was responsible enough. I was committed to my career, met my deadlines and paid my bills on time. I also had the luxury of working from home for California clients, which meant their 9am was my noon and, thankfully, I could wander New York freely at night (“Tiptoe through our shiny city / With our diamond slippers on”).
Yes, in the glittering city (“under the silvery, silvery Citibank lights”), I’d grow into a more confident, capable version of myself. I’d walk anytime and anywhere I could—just to take in every building, every street, every subway stop, hell, even every Duane Reade. I’d always been on the shier side, but New York was slowly bolstering me. I was meeting all kinds of people and having spontaneous whir-about-the-metropolis adventures. I was also lonely at times and making my fair share of mistakes.
I didn’t have a master plan. I only knew I loved New York and I’d deliberately made it my home. And that, to me, seemed enough.
With New York being New York and my enthusiasm for it being endlessly effusive, it was easy to get carried away. I didn’t do anything reckless or crazy (relative terms, I realize), but I also would try to fit as much into the night as possible, which sometimes, as you might expect, bore unpleasant consequences.
On the cusp of 30, I’d clasp my forehead and fleetingly ponder whether I was doing things the right way: Was I really living, or was this all some grand, indulgent escape? It’s no wonder I immediately gravitated toward lines like “Let's not try to figure out everything at once / It's hard to keep track of you falling through the sky.”
Where Boxer’s predecessor Alligator (my snarling darling of the quintet’s flawless discography) raucously willed every whim of youthful nights, Boxer arrived two years later flashing a wearier though still dreamy eye. For all its superficial luster, it’s an album murky with anxieties—professional, political, psychological.
Commenting on why The National selected “Boxer” as the album title, a suggestion from singer Matt Berninger’s wife (then girlfriend) Carin Besser, he noted, “It seemed appropriate. The characters are sort of fighting for something, trying to hold onto things, or hold onto youth—or are in some sort of struggle.” To some degree, I feel to live is to struggle, and certainly back then, it was often a struggle to even define the struggle. After nearly three decades of being in my own head, I was still scrambling toward something elusive, uncertain any real progress was being made.
So, I did what I always had and burrowed closer still to the music.
Alligator had flung The National atop the short list of most every discerning indie critic. And as the Cincinnati-bred Brooklyn five-piece zipped across the U.S. to Europe and back again, traversing half the globe in a 130-plus-show tour supporting Alligator, their fanbase just kept growing. Every subsequent visit to a city meant a larger venue, a more fervent following. Six years after starting the band and still hanging onto their day jobs, The National—in all their sheepish glory—were finally on the verge of breakthrough.
Yet, by their own admission, they were also on the brink of collapse. Between post-tour exhaustion and the pressure to deliver another head-turner, The National landed in an unfamiliar space—they were creatively sapped and argumentative.
During the summer of 2006, following a short break and a brief, barren rehearsal period, the band began work on Boxer in Bridgeport, Connecticut. They’d reassembled at Tarquin Studios, recording home of Peter Katis, long-time collaborator who had co-produced Alligator (2005) and immediate predecessor Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers (2003). The stage seemed set for success.
But there was one small problem: The National had no songs.
And, though they spent the next two months living at the studio and pouring themselves into Boxer, the five members—Matt Berninger (singer); twin brothers Aaron Dessner (guitarist) and Bryce Dessner (guitarist); and brothers Bryan Devendorf (drummer) and Scott Devendorf (bassist)—struggled with output. They ended up returning to their respective Brooklyn residences with scant sketches. Not quite the opus they’d envisioned.
In a 2007 Drowned in Sound interview, guitarist Aaron Dessner recalls, “It was incredibly difficult! We worked straight through the summer, every day, ‘til late September and by that point we’d spent more than 70 per cent of the recording budget and we had less than half of an album, and we’d all lost our minds.”
Over the fall and winter of 2006, the Dessner brothers reworked much of what The National recorded at Tarquin in their Brooklyn home studio, pulling in friends Thomas Bartlett (Doveman), Padma Newsome (Clogs) and Sufjan Stevens among others to help flesh out a reimagined sound. By the time the band reconvened in January 2007, the songs were finally falling into place. Even so, The National were constantly fiddling with Boxer, retaining key components, but making significant compositional and lyrical changes up until the eleventh hour.
In the same interview, Dessner reflects, “The good thing was that the original ideas were all inspired ideas. The foundation of everything was good, the tempos, the feeling, et cetera—but something was missing. A lot of the stuff did not have lyrics until the very, very end. Then Matt eventually found this lyric for ‘Squalor Victoria.’ That song didn’t have lyrics until the night before we mastered it. Many songs we pulled apart at the last minute and took out, like ‘Brainy’ had an entirely different ending and we took it off.”
But, for all the agony caused in its conception, Boxer sounds goddamn effortless. For one, it boasts a noir sheen similar to Alligator, thanks, in no small part, to Katis’ masterful touch. Combined with Berninger’s husky baritone vocals, Devendorf’s pronounced drumming and the Dessners’ raindrop-slick arrangements, Boxer makes for addictive listening.
And my need was constant. In addition to playing the album ceaselessly at home, I chased live performances whenever I could—and the bountiful opportunities downright spoiled me.
There I was in my new favorite city watching my new favorite band wow crowds all over Manhattan. Once a wallflower preoccupied by what others might’ve thought, I was now flailing spectacularly in a variety of venues from the lowest to highest parts of the skyscraping borough.
In 2007 alone, I saw The National half a dozen times. I vividly recall scenes from their Bowery Ballroom, Terminal 5 and United Palace shows and feel so fortunate to have known them back when Alligator and Boxer were their biggest albums. Many fans today fantasize about setlists swizzling across these two sister albums (“Secret Meeting” into “Brainy,” “Abel” into “Squalor Victoria,” “Fake Empire” into “Mr. November”). Maybe throw in some “Murder Me Rachael” or “90-Mile Water Wall.” Yeah, I know. Please don’t hate me.
Even more memorable were the performances at the unexpected places: I’ll never forget seeing them at South Street Seaport, drifting giddily in the tropical summer breeze convinced incredible experiences like this were precisely why I needed to be in NYC. I also caught them at the Ed Sullivan Theater for a Letterman taping. I couldn’t tell you who else was on the show, but I remember every second of The National’s TV debut and still have a signed poster from that day hanging on my wall.
“Fake Empire,” Boxer’s enchanting opener picks up right where Alligator’s closer, “Mr. November,” leaves off, matching the latter’s bigger-than-life cyclone of energy with a measured though equally gratifying build-up that bursts into fanfare—a dramatic departure from the track’s dainty, piano-laced tiptoe of an intro.
Like much of the album, the genius rousing orchestration of the song masks the unsteady atmosphere within. On the surface, all seems dynamic, rosy and bright. Sporting white shirts, blue blazers and ties, the characters of Boxer know the rules of the game and play it well. The corporate robots have sold their souls (or at minimum have become unrecognizable to longtime friends) and are doing “everything that they ask you to” in exchange for a mediocre paycheck. And, just as mechanically, when not working (or getting filled with quarters), the same cast is either dazed doing “whatever the TV tells us” or mindlessly spritzing perfume, hanging “holiday rainbow lights in the garden” or otherwise getting ready for social gatherings devoid of any real connection.
Reminiscent of the vapid realms depicted in Eliot’s The Waste Land and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the world of Boxer is similarly hollow. And yet, the veneer is cracking. The characters are sensing there’s more to the equation (“Everywhere you go is swirling / Everything you say has water under it”). And, as the quiet unease seeps in, so does the fear.
“I think Boxer is more surreal than the other records,” Berninger confided to Stereogum in 2007 “It seems to be set in a bent cartoonish urban/suburban universe. I purposely mixed a lot of whimsical fairytale imagery (diamond slippers, bluebirds, etc.) in with mundane details of ordinary life to give it a peculiar vibe. I picture everyone dressed kinda fancy wandering around in slow-motion under weird lighting. Lots of sparkles.”
In this manufactured fairytale life, the characters strive to break free from this detached, unfulfilling reality and find meaning—often in the form of interpersonal relationships. In “Brainy,” my favorite track off Boxer, the narrator is so desperate to connect and make an impression with someone he admires, he’s amassing whatever clues he can (“You know I keep your fingerprints / In a pink folder in the middle of my table / You’re the tall kingdom I surround / Think I better follow you around”). Taken at face value, the words might seem somewhat scary or stalkerish, but in the context of Boxer, there’s a sweetness and honesty here when so often the characters are not-so-blissfully unaware.
“Green Gloves” offers another glimpse into the narrator’s yearning. This time, he seems to be missing all the friends he’s lost touch with, as so often happens as we get older. When we realize months or years have gone by since we last talked to or saw someone, the single word “life” has become a commonly accepted excuse. Too frequently, we lose ourselves to the grind. But, if you allow yourself the space to think about the friendship, it can be overpowering: “Take another sip of them / It floats around and takes me over / Like a little drop of ink / In a glass of water.”
The most overt manifestation of love on Boxer is the beautiful “Slow Show.” While I absolutely adore the album’s up-tempo songs (and specifically, “Squalor Victoria,” you know I mean you), the simple intimacy of “Slow Show” is exactly what’s feeding the Boxer void. The narrator is trapped at a party and feels out of place. He can’t seem to get his bearings (“Looking for somewhere to stand and stay / I leaned on the wall and the wall leaned away”) and longs to be home with his significant other where he can just be himself (“I wanna hurry home to you / Put on a slow, dumb show for you / And crack you up”). Adding one more notch to its level of irresistibility is the allusion to “29 Years,” a song from The National’s self-titled debut The National (2001), which is likely about Berninger’s wife, Carin. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say I may never stop swooning.
Like a compilation of short stories, the 12 songs on Boxer are little vignettes. We peer into doorways and windows, watching from a distance as though these lives are not our own. But, even dressed in Berninger’s poetic finery, the scenes are relatable—the polished instability, the pull of responsibility, the zoning out, the need for something more.
What I love most about Boxer is it derives magic from the mundane, and while clearly that makes for magnificent art, it also just might be the secret to adulthood.
But, if it’s not, that’s also OK. My 29-year-old self latched onto the line “Let's not try to figure out everything at once” and it remains in my brain, rising to the forefront when needed. Til then, I’ll just keep swinging away…at something.
Enjoyed this article? Read more about The National here:
Alligator (2005) | High Violet (2010) | Sleep Well Beast (2017)
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