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I'm Tired of Boring Music

December 28, 2007 11:16 AM

've been hearing for a while about The National for a while, but I hadn't bothered to check it out because, well, I'm lazy about finding new music. Someone essentially needs to foist new stuff on me for me to listen to it. That's exactly what Rachel did last night. And now I'm just annoyed because Boxer, The National's first album, kind of sucks.

I mean, ok, maybe there's something here that's not terrible. The instrumentation is very complex and lush sounding. There are a bunch of instruments at work--guitars, strings, pianos, horns--and they all come together really well. The arrangements are complex but approachable. I do like that. But complexity and quality are two different things. For the majority of the album, it seems that the band just sort of layers the instruments on top of each other without much regard to melody or hooks. Yeah, I know this isn't pop music so not every song needs to have a catchy motif, but some sort of identifiable melody would be nice. Instead we just get songs that sound the same from beginning to end without any sort of dynamic or identifiable progression. I know this is something I complained about with In Rainbows, too, but it just bothers me when the entire song sounds like the first ten seconds. If I've heard everything you've got to offer before you even start singing, then I'm going to get bored. I want crescendos, I want varied instrumentation and different sections, I want a song that gets me pumped up or makes me reflect on something. I don't want an album full of mellow slow-burns that not only fail to progress within their own confines but that all start to run together as the album drags on.

The singer doesn't help things. His voice is pretty low, which isn't a problem in itself, but he also refuses to infuse his performance with any sort of energy or life. It's all the same pseudowhisper monotone. He just sounds bored. He sounds like it's a rainy day, his girlfriend just left him, he just got out of bed, and he'd rather be sitting somewhere drinking tea and reading a good book. It's awesome to write a song such that you conjure such a specific image, but it's just sad when that's the sense that permeates every vocal delivery for an entire album.

"Green Gloves" is a perfect example of everything I'm talking about. You've heard the entire song within the first thirty seconds. The singer sounds like he's drowsy and he'd rather be back in bed. There's a lot of instruments going on, but they fail to muster any interest. It's just a mediocre boring song. And it's typical of the soggy crap on this album.

The only two exceptions are the first two tracks, which are actually interesting on some degree. I was actually pretty excited by the end of the second song. But then it all crashed and burned.

In any event, those first two songs aren't enough to make this album forgettable at best, detestable at worst. As a whole, I give it two out of five stars.