Boxer has everything mentioned above and more, hailed as the album that put The National on the map and indeed the album that introduced me to this enigmatic band. I have since collected their back catalogue, whilst making sure to keep up with their newer releases but Boxer is another one of the albums that maintains my argument that all bands have a zenith, an album that is their high point in their career, while others, being of an almost near quality, do not match it. Take Electro-Shock Blues by the Eels, The Joshua Tree by U2, and Illinoise by Sufjan Stevens as merely three examples of this point.
Boxer features the aforementioned Sufjan Stevens, along with Doveman (Thomas Bartlett) and it was lauded by critics: voted the second best album of the year by Stereogum and the best album of the year by Paste Magazine. It also made several album of the decade lists, which included Pitchfork Media, Paste, and Aquarium Drunkard amongst others.
As expected, Boxer has a strong opening, with Fake Empire, a song oozing with atmosphere. It’s a dreamy melody with some captivating lyrics to boot:
“Turn the light out say goodnight, no thinking for a little while
Let’s not try to figure out everything at once
It’s hard to keep track of you falling through the sky
We’re half-awake in a fake empire”
The first two lines of the last section immediately grabbed me and made me think of an instruction on how best to listen to the album, switching off the light, immersing yourself in the songs but not trying to grasp the meanings within, at least not on initial listening. I think that is a key point here, as aware as I am of people focusing on the music first, lyrics second, I have also spoken to those who listen to both simultaneously and those who read the lyric booklet religiously cover to cover before putting the CD/LP on for the first time. I fall into the first category and think it is a key way to getting to grips with the album, as The National’s lyrics are intense and thought-provoking and potentially jolting if you try to grasp the meaning immediately.
After Fake Empire, we are treated to one of the highlights of the album, Mistaken for Strangers:
“Oh, you wouldn’t want an angel watching over you, surprise, surprise, they wouldn’t want to watch
Another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults”
Musically it is one of the strongest tracks and lyrically it holds its own with those following. It has an urgency about it, yet with a bleak positivity that crawls out from under the inexorable dark melody. The video actually follows those themes to perfection with some intense playing of instruments (by men in black) accompanied by light hearted scenes in a bedroom.
Jumping forward a few songs to easily the strongest on the album (lyrically wise) and Slow Show, we see just how able Berninger is:
My leg is sparkles my leg is pins
I better get my shit together, better gather my shit in
You could drive a car through my head in five minutes
From one side of it to the other
The best lyrics smack of poetry and Matt Berninger has that in abundance, lyrics that make perfect sense, that can be interpreted in a number of ways, all of which work, mean something to us.
Slow Show just intimates so much about love and relationships and the worries and anxieties we have within them, even when we are comfortable with the person we are with. It is an honest rendition of how it is to be loved and to love, yet still question meanings.
Backtracking to the fourth track, sees my absolute favourite from Boxer and Squalor Victoria, a song which adds to the list of those that make me question whether lyrics are as important to me as the music, as this tune hits me with its indie/classical collaboration immediately, before a word has been uttered. I await the realisation that the lyrics do make it too but I am not sure that is the case, as Squalor Victoria really is a track where the music dominates and takes hold and I think it is wonderfully placed on the album to drag you out of the reverie and make you focus on top quality music.
“You were always weird but I never had to hold you by the edges
Like I do now”
One of the most interesting images on the album comes from Start a War which details that part of the relationship, where the cracks are beginning to show and there is a real danger of separation. Many artists have used war as metaphor for break-ups. However, The National almost make this unique on the album, giving the whole theme a different edge through their music, lyrics and the baritone voice of Matt Berninger.
And that’s where Boxer surpasses the others for me, as it is a case of an excellence unparalleled in their previous work, or indeed that which has followed. In truth there is much about the band that shines and although I agree Alligator is a fantastic album and fully believe that Cherry Tree from the EP of the same name is one of their finest songs, I firmly hold to the point that Boxer is their stand out album, the complete package. The songs can be listened to and enjoyed individually but when listened to as a whole gives an indication of just why this particular album is so beloved of the critics.
If you are new to the world of The National, then I strongly suggest you begin here, as even though it means you will probably not appreciate their other work to the same level, it will also allow you to hear their best album, without parallel. If you are familiar with the band but are undecided on the album then it means you need several more listens, maybe in the dark, without trying to get it all in one go.
“We expected something
Something better than before
We expected something more”
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Mark Deniz is the force behind Morrigan Books and Gilgamesh Press and knows a good album when he hears one.
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Endhiran - all this and apologetic mosquitoes too.
Grant Stone
I nearly missed it.
I was wondering if Endhiran would get a New Zealand release. It's not uncommon for Bollywood movies to screen in the multiplexes round Auckland and this one - well you've all seen the trailer right? I got lucky. A video store had organised six nights on one of New Zealand's largest cinema screens and if I moved fast, I'd be just in time to get tickets for the last showing.
I came to Bollywood the wrong way round. A few years ago I started listening to A.R. Rahman soundtracks. Figured they'd be great accompaniment while I was writing. They're that all right. Turns out Rahman is the greatest perpetrator of earworms working today. Doesn't matter that I don't speak Hindi - it got so bad that I couldn't listen to Rehna Tu more than one a week. Takes about that long for it to leave your head. Typing that last sentence? Yeah it's back again.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying I'd been listening to the Delhi-6 soundtrack for months before I ever saw the movie. Don't believe the 33% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Perhaps it's a little more low-key than some Bollywood films, but it's haunting. I suspect it's going to be a film I rewatch every few years.
But we're not here to talk about Delhi-6.
Does Endhiran live up to that trailer?
Oh so very yes.
If you're into action, there's plenty. If you liked the car chase in Matrix Reloaded, but thought that it was perhaps a little slow - wait till you see this one. From now on, if I watch a car chase and at some point the hero doesn't pick up his own car and use it to deflect bullets, I don't want to know. If you've ever wanted to see a giant cobra made from thousands of robots grab pluck a helicopter out of the air, this is your lucky day.
If Endhiran was nothing more than crazy robot action sequences, it would still be a pretty good film. But it's more than that. The robot, Chitti, revolves around Doctor Vaseegaran his creator in an ever-changing orbit - from servant to friend to rival in love to, finally, nemesis. Shelley's Frankenstein is retold, in a crazy-quilt splintered way. Chitti is built to serve the military, but we see him cleaning, cooking, acting as a noise control officer and delivering a baby. See, I type that and it sounds weird, but trust me - it all fits. At every turn there's so
mething you don't expect. When Sana is bitten by a mosquito, Chitti hunts down that mosquito and gets it to apologise! Never saw that in the Terminator films.
This is Bollywood, so of course there's plenty of dancing. It's an A.R. Rahman soundtrack, so the music's great. It's funny too.
Endhiran cost $34 million to produce, apparently the most expensive Bollywood film ever, but a tiny amount for a standard Hollywood scifi/action flick. Perhaps this is why the special effects start to look a little worn in the third act. But this film contains more unbridled entertainment than any $100 million + blockbuster I've seen in years.
See this film. You won't regret it.
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Goddamn Future Music
Kit O'Connell
I can pinpoint the exact moment I blame for my love of electronic music today. It happened in the 80s, after my family got our first VCR. It felt like we were the latest adopters in the world -- as if my friends had been watching videocassettes for my entire life while I languished in my cable television squalor. Being the well-adjusted, popular kid that I was I immediately began devouring every bit of recorded science fiction I could get my hands on, from the Star Trek pilot "The Cage" to Disney's trashy magnum opus, The Black Hole (1979) with its glowing red robot that so terrified my young heart.
At this age I was obsessed not just with space, but with all things alien. Stories of encounters with alien intelligence thrilled me and scared me. I had concocted a story -- or memory -- of my own encounter with a shadowy figure that loomed over my bed in a moment of half-consciousness; it was quite obvious to me this was not any mere dream but a genuine creature from beyond the earth. More obvious was that space visitors would be a part of our future. It was just a matter of time before they came out of the skies en masse, and we could only hope it was more Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) than what I'd seen on TV's War of the Worlds.
And so we come to Forbidden Planet (1956). I am sure I rented it because of the robot on the cover. Robots drew me in then as surely as a come-hither look would today; actually, robots pretty much still have the same effect on me now. This film stars a young, very serious Leslie Nielsen and is actually an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest (only in space). I didn't care about any of that though, just that it had a robot.
In Forbidden Planet, a crew of handsome, upstanding, White American heroes land on the faraway planet of Altair IV. There they discover the only survivors of the spaceship Bellerophon: spooky old Dr. Morbius, played in a style vaguely reminiscent of Doctor Who villain The Master by character actor Walter Pidgeon; the aforementioned Robby the Robot; and Morbius' beautiful daughter, Altaira, played by Anne Francis. There's the usual tension you'd expect from this arrangement, with Morbius fighting handsome, young (and very serious) Leslie Nielsen for his daughter's affections.
Except that Dr. Morbius has been experimenting with Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, namely the lost technology of Altair's dead alien race, the Krell. An invisible entity begins to haunt our heroes and so the Captain and his men confront the villain in his study. Then the moment comes -- after an expository infodump about Altair IV's lost alien civilization, and just before taking the crew into an underground alien city, Morbius casually plays a Krell recording on a glowing device.
That was it -- goddamn future music -- ambient atonal blips and bleeps obviously designed to sound "weird" to audiences of 1956. But to my more contemporary but immature mind, this was clearly what we'd all be listening to when we found that ancient, lost alien spaceship in a crater somewhere and took to the stars. We'd all be wearing silver jumpsuits, hanging out with robots, and listening to music just like this.
I know now that the movie's score was composed by Louis and Bebe Barron, a couple hired by chance from out of a Greenwich Village nightclub, and Forbidden Planet sounds deliciously weird throughout. It is considered the first electronic music film score, though in the credits these non-union composers are credited for 'Electronic Tonalities' rather than music. I knew none of this back in the 80s as I watched this film over and over on repeated rentings. What I knew was that this was no "Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah (Means I Love You):" this sounded like nothing else I'd ever heard and I knew if I wanted to live in the future I just had to like it.
This youthful discovery led to desperate attempts to tune into Musical Starstreams on late night car trips while explaining to my exasperated mother how much I loved "Space Music." It led to driving my family crazy by cranking up the soundtrack to Metroid on the Nintendo Entertainment System. And then, after a brief period of confused teenage experimentation with Moby, it leads directly to the drug-soaked raves and Burning Man events I attend today. There've been nights where I suddenly found myself wearing shiny spacepants and waving a soap-bubble spewing blaster gun while a theremin played or a DJ spun some "chiptunes."
Louis and Bebe Barron, I blame you. What hath your music wrought?
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Kit O'Connell is a writer, critic, and meda junkie living in Austin, TX. In addition to playing with words, Kit attends events in the local and national Burning Man community, is an avid urban cyclist, and still loves everything to do with robots. He is a founding member of the Austin Art Nerds.
His poetry has appeared in Aberrant Dreams and Oysters and Chocolate. He writes book reviews for the SF Site. He lives with his cat in a 10-bedroom flophouse that doubles as an asylum for wayward hippies. You can read more of him on his homepage, Approximately 8,000 Words or by following his twitter.
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The End
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