I’ve been enthusiastic about The National since early 2007, the first time I heard Alligator. I guess that makes me late, but whatever—I’ve spent the past couple of years religiously sermonizing them to everyone I can, expressing how much they make me feel and how important I think it is for people to hear Matt Berninger’s voice swell over the plucky depths of “Start A War” and “All the Wine.”
After September 17th, the night when I watched The Arcade Fire play the best show I’d ever seen, I still couldn’t bring myself to miss The National one night later, though I was exhausted and still shaking from the impact of Win Butler and his frighteningly provocative arrangements. And once I walked into the Ogden Theater with the one friend willing enough to pay to see a band he’d never heard, I forgot for a moment what I’d seen the night before and became completely immersed in the sensuality of The National’s music.
It’s about once a year that an artist is introduced to me who I can almost immediately add to my canon of music worth hearing. The National is one of those bands. In my humblest opinion, Boxer was the best record of 2007 and I made known my feelings about it. Writing about them today isn’t momentous or particularly important, rather due to the fact that I threw Boxer on in an effort to smoothly wind down another week at work and felt like sharing. But I’m always glad when I get a chance to talk about the music that truly moves me, and while I listen to a countless number of amazing artists every day, there’s still a special sort of pang I feel when I put on one of this band’s records.
It’s so paltry and clichéd at this point but Bob Marley spoke so simply and elegantly when he said it: “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” I wouldn’t agree that pain abates, but rather that emotion becomes most resonant, when I hear music like this. Hopefully you all get to share in that feeling at least once in a while.
3 years ago