National, the Boxer ( yellow vinyl LP )

Release date: 17-05-2007 ( originally released in 2002 )

2007 EU press on yellow vinyl LP- this 2002 album filled with lush arrangements and sees the band incorporating new instrumentation and expanded musical elements such as piano, trumpet, and more prominent background vocals...churning grooves and shambling new wave rips, turning up depressed guitar poetry that's both elegantly wasted and kinda murky.

Tracks:
A1     Fake Empire     
A2     Mistaken For Strangers     
A3     Brainy     
A4     Squalor Victoria     
A5     Green Gloves     
A6     Slow Show     

B1     Apartment Story     
B2     Start A War     
B3     Guest Room     
B4     Racing Like A Pro     
B5     Ada     
B6     Gospel

With Boxer, the National have reached four albums into their increasingly lauded career, never hurrying the tempo, never over-reaching in volume or instrumental density. Instead, the quintet's balanced on a pin, emotionally austere, if not utterly downhearted, finding brilliantly dusky ways for Matt Berninger's lovelorn voice to mesh with a pair of unobtrusive guitars and, here, an occasional phalanx of piano, horns, and strings. The tunes roll off slowly, Berninger's lyrics hugging the instruments with a sad brawn, rough-hewn as the drums and bass toy with angularity (try "Mistaken for Strangers," for one) but end up woven by that voice. Drummer Bryan Devendorf presses the songs forward repeatedly, as on "Start a War," where he gently thumps the time as the acoustic guitars frame and dot the melody, coalescing as the drums starkly chisel the melody. Nary a distortion pedal is harmed on Boxer, giving the National a magnetism so forlorn that you can't stop listening. --Andrew Bartlett AMAZON