The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
The National · produced by Peter Katis with the band · Beggars Banquet · twelve tracks · about 43 minutes
Mode
Literate indie rock turned inward; a drum-led band with chamber strings and horns set as colour
Mythos
Shelter against the world outside: a night of play under an empire not looked at, the self in costume, and a boxer of the title who is never sung
Phase
Twelve songs from a public night to a private hush, turning toward home at the centre, in the sixth
Presentation
Album; twelve tracks in their original order, about forty-three minutes, none extended and none an interlude
Register
A low, level baritone over busy, precise drums; interlocking figures of guitar and piano; strings and horns that enter and leave; release twice
Scale
One consciousness in the life of one class, in one city, in one decade
Governing Proposition
A band known for a record of rising tension that broke into shouting makes its next one by holding back: twelve songs in which the climaxes are prepared and withheld, and the voice stays low and level while the drums press beneath it. The wager of the record is that restraint can carry a meaning: that a private life made into a shelter is also a way of not being awake, and that a record about not waking can be built of songs that decline to wake.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens on a piano figure that sits across the beat, so the song seems to float a little off its own pulse. Over it a low voice sets a scene: a couple planning a night of willed play, while the title names what they have agreed not to look at. The empire is the country around them, at war elsewhere, and the song never turns to face it. It stays in the room, at the party, in the half-light, and the drift of the piano against the beat is the drift of people who have chosen to be not quite awake.
The song builds without hurrying. The drums come in, the arrangement thickens around a voice that stays level, and near the end, for the only time on the album, the record lets itself rise in full: horns open over the figure and carry it out. One song holds the argument of the whole. A private night is set against a public world, a pressure gathers under a calm surface, and a release comes once, late, and does not resolve what it has gathered. Everything that follows is measured against this opening, and most of it declines to rise this far.
Boxer is the band’s fourth studio album, after The National (2001), Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers (2003) and Alligator (2005). It was released by Beggars Banquet in May 2007 and produced by Peter Katis with the band: Matt Berninger, voice and words; Aaron and Bryce Dessner, guitars, piano and arrangement; Scott Devendorf, bass; Bryan Devendorf, drums. It holds twelve songs in about forty-three minutes. None is extended and none is a fragment or an interlude, and the tempos sit mostly at mid-pace and slow. Its scale is that of a collection of songs, each closed, and its unity has to come from sound and sequence.
Movement II
The second track is quicker, and the drums lead it. Bryan Devendorf plays the part a guitar riff would play elsewhere, busy, precise and forward, and the guitars and piano of the Dessners work around it in small interlocking figures rather than in chords. Over that drive the voice will not rise. The song’s subject is a man made anonymous by the life he dressed for, the professional self as a costume worn until its wearer is mistaken for a stranger in it. The drums press and the voice declines to, and the tension between them is what the song is about.
Green Gloves takes the costume literally: a man pulling on his absent friends’ clothes, keeping a closeness by imitation after the friendship has drifted. Brainy carries the same professional life, and Squalor Victoria, the loudest and most driven song on the album, is still pressure held: the drums push and the voice does not break. The people in these songs are particular, a man in borrowed clothes, a worker in a costume, a guest at a party, and they stay particular. The record does not turn them into types, and it does not make them more than themselves.
What the record brings into the open can be stated, and it holds: a private life made into a shelter is also a way of not being awake, and the adult self is a costume. The images are unambiguous in their direction, a couple at play under a fake empire, a man mistaken for a stranger in his own life, a man in his friends’ clothes, and the sound carries what the words hold back. Where OK Computer described the managed life, this record renders how it feels from inside. The condition is a class’s more than a society’s: the young professionals of one city, in one decade.
Movement III
Slow Show stands at the centre of the record, the sixth of twelve, and it is the one song that names the wish to go home: a man at a party who wants to leave it. It is quiet and slow, and in its coda it turns to a borrowed refrain, folded in from the band’s own earlier song, a dream of the beloved held for twenty-nine years. The quiet tune lifts the whole song. It is the warmest turn on the album, and after the public night of the opening it is the first time the record looks toward a home that might hold.
Around the hinge stand its two faces. Apartment Story is the shelter itself, a couple closed in their rooms against whatever is outside, and the song makes the closing-in sound like comfort. Start a War is the threat to it, a quarrel between the two who share the shelter. The order argues: the record opens on the public night, turns home at the centre and closes in a private hush. The sequence is the record’s one narrative, and it is carried by placement, not by any story the songs tell, since each of them is closed on itself.
The second half is where the order loosens. Guest Room and Racing Like a Pro are good songs, and Racing Like a Pro gives the record its one settled family life, a woman whose ambition has slowed into an ordinary contentment. But both restate what Apartment Story and Brainy have already found, in the same tempo and the same grain, and a palette held so tight across the record lets the mid-tempo songs run together. The record would lose one of them without losing its argument. Nothing is padded; two songs are not compelled.
Movement IV
Start a War is a quarrel conducted at a whisper. Two people in a room, the threat of a breach between them, and over them the word for what the country was doing elsewhere, used as the title and never raised. The song has a low, cold height that comes from restraint alone. Two years earlier the band would have shouted it. On Alligator the tension rose until the voice broke into shouting, and that was the record that had found the band its first audience.
The inheritance is plain: the baritone gloom of Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave and the Tindersticks, the post-punk drive of Joy Division as it came to New York through Interpol’s generation, and the band’s own previous record. The turn is inward. The shout is withdrawn, the climaxes are withheld, the guitars are set back so that the drums carry the songs, and strings and horns come in as colour, not lift. The stake was real and small: a quieter, slower, less immediate follow-up, on an independent label, at the point where the louder record was the obvious move. The departure is from the band’s own past, not from its tradition. The forms are verse and chorus, and the palette is the literate indie rock of its moment, refined.
What the record showed was that a rock band could make a mid-tempo, drum-led record of adult disquiet and keep its intensity. That register had been shown before, by Cohen, the Tindersticks and the Blue Nile, and the means here were refined rather than new. The record’s manner, restrained, drum-led and literate, was imitated in the indie rock that followed, and the band’s later standing was built on it; much of that reach belongs to the band rather than to the album. It answered the loud, rising rock of its years with restraint, and youth with adulthood, and the answer was heard.
Movement V
Before the close comes Ada, the lightest lyric on the record, a release of pressure before the end. Then Gospel, quiet and private, under the one sacred title on the album. What it offers beneath the title is a domestic tenderness, and the record ends on a hush that is close to grace. It is the public frame of the opening turned inward: Fake Empire looked away from the country, and Gospel has closed the door. The two share the same hush, the same low voice and the same refusal to rise until the end, and the record’s law is heard at its two extremes.
What the record holds is one consciousness, disaffected and attentive, across twelve songs: love and the couple, the professional life as costume, friendship as drift, a settled family life. The state and its war are only pressure under the surface. The sacred is a title. Nature, history, the body beyond drink and sleep, and labour as labour do not enter. The orders that are present are joined by a single sensibility, which is a real integration, but they are few and lie close together, in the life of one class, in one city, in one decade. The boxer of the album’s title, a figure of guarded endurance, is never sung.
Nineteen years on, the record has outlived the blog-era indie scene it was released into, the CD it was issued on and the war it shadows. It is still played whole, still placed among the best albums of its decade, and still the measure by which the band is judged. Its sound has aged well because it avoided the bright, compressed production of its moment: acoustic drums, real strings and horns, a voice recorded close and plain. What it cannot shed is its period, the professional Brooklyn of the late 2000s, which later listeners hear as a period. Within that world it is exact, and it ends where it chose to, quietly.
Act III · The Twelve
Across twelve songs the subtractive test mostly fails to find a cut, and where it bites it takes little. Fake Empire must open: the record’s public frame, a night of willed play beside an empire nobody looks at, is set there alone. Gospel must close, quiet, the frame turned inward. Slow Show is the hinge, the one song that names the wish to go home, and Apartment Story and Start a War are its two faces, the shelter and the threat to it. Ada earns its place as the release the close needs. What holds the figure is the second half, where Guest Room and Racing Like a Pro restate what Apartment Story and Brainy have found, in the same tempo and grain: one song’s give, spread across two.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and it holds: a private life made into a shelter is also a way of not being awake, and the professional self is a costume worn until its wearer is mistaken for a stranger in it. That is a meaning, not a mood. Fake Empire sets the first in its opening verse, a couple planning a night of play while the title names what they will not look at. Mistaken for Strangers sets the second, and Green Gloves takes the costume literally, a man in his absent friends’ clothes. The images are unambiguous in direction, and the sound carries what they hold back from saying. What holds it at the bar and not above is reach: the condition is a class’s, not a society’s.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Elevation is real and rationed, and the rationing is the method. Fake Empire holds the height: a piano figure set across the beat swells under the voice and opens, near the end, into horns, the one moment the record rises in full. Slow Show turns in its coda to a borrowed refrain, a dream of the beloved held for twenty-nine years, and the quiet tune lifts the whole song. Start a War has a low, cold height in its restraint, and Gospel ends the record on a hush close to grace. Mistaken for Strangers and Squalor Victoria have force, not elevation. Terror is absent, and much is built not to lift.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Archetype is evoked in titles and built only in the shape of the whole, and the particulars are the record’s strength: a couple in an apartment, a man at a party, a woman whose ambition has slowed into a settled life, friends drifting apart. Fake Empire, a city at play while a war goes on elsewhere, gestures at a late empire’s banquet; Gospel names the sacred over a domestic tenderness. What bears load is shelter against the world outside, which the sequence carries from the public night of the opening through the turn home at the centre to the closed door of the close. What holds it below the eights is that no figure bears it: the boxer of the title, a figure of guarded endurance, is never sung.
Score: 7.9 / 10
The inheritance is plain: the baritone gloom of Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave and the Tindersticks, the post-punk drive of Joy Division as it reached New York through Interpol’s generation, and the band’s own Alligator, a record of rising tension that broke into shouting. The turn is inward, against the loud, rising indie rock of its years: the shout withdrawn, the climaxes withheld, the guitars set back so the drums carry the songs. The stake was real. Alligator had found the band its first audience, and the follow-up was quieter and slower where a louder record was the obvious move. What holds it below the bar is the ground it turned on: the register had been cleared by Cohen and the Tindersticks, and no convention is broken.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Change the form and the record loses most of what it knows, because the knowledge is in the restraint. A record about holding back from waking is built of songs that hold back: climaxes are withheld, the voice stays low, and release comes only at the end of Fake Empire and in the coda of Slow Show. The opening piano sits across the beat, so the song floats off its own pulse, and that drift is the half-awake state the words name. The drums press while the voice declines to, and that tension is the subject. The sequence argues too, from the public night to a private hush. What holds it short of the top is Guest Room and Racing Like a Pro, closer to containers.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Nineteen years of return supply the evidence, and it is evidence shown, not promised. The record’s standing rose after release rather than settling, and it became the album by which the band is measured; Fake Empire and Mistaken for Strangers remain fixtures of the band’s sets, and the record is still played whole. The yield is in the recording: Bryan Devendorf’s drum parts and the interleaved guitars and piano reward close listening, and the oblique words open further on return, because they are images held back from statement. What holds it here is the kind of return: it is shown in listening more than in a literature of study, and no reworking across idioms has followed.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The contest is with the loud, rising indie rock of its years, the band’s own previous record among it: this one answers volume with restraint and youth with adulthood. The intrinsic force is real and bounded. It showed that a rock band could make a mid-tempo, drum-led record of adult disquiet and keep its intensity, though Cohen, the Tindersticks and the Blue Nile had shown the register and the means were refined, not new. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the record’s register, restrained, drum-led and literate, was imitated in the indie rock that followed, and the band’s later standing was built on it. What holds it below the eights is that part of that reach is the band’s rather than the album’s.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Survival is weighed over nineteen years. It has outlived the blog-era indie scene it entered, the CD it was issued on and the war it shadows, and it is still played whole, still placed among the best albums of its decade and still the band’s measure. Its production has aged well, avoiding the bright, compressed sound of its moment: acoustic drums, real strings and horns, a voice recorded close and plain. The surface fixed to its moment is real and light: the Bush years under Fake Empire and Start a War, and the professional Brooklyn of the late 2000s, heard now as a period. The span is short.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Command of the recorded medium is load-bearing. Peter Katis gives the band a close, warm, dry room where every part is legible. Bryan Devendorf’s drumming is the record’s engine and signature: busy, precise, often the lead voice, so that in Squalor Victoria and Mistaken for Strangers the drums do what a guitar riff would do elsewhere. The Dessners’ guitars and piano interlock in small repeating figures rather than chords, and the cross-beat piano of Fake Empire is the record’s best single idea. Strings and horns enter as colour and leave before they become sentiment, except in the first track’s coda, which earns it. The fault is sameness: the second half’s mid-tempo songs run together.
Score: 8.6 / 10
One law governs the album: pressure held under a calm surface, private shelter set against a public world, in a sound that withholds release. The two most distant elements obey it. Fake Empire, the record’s public statement, and Gospel, its most private, share the same hush, the same low voice and the same refusal to rise until the end. Squalor Victoria, the loudest and most driven track, is still pressure held: the drums push and the voice does not break. The range runs from party to bedroom, office to kitchen, drive to hush, and the law is unbroken across it. What holds the figure is that the range is narrow in tempo, register and subject. Nothing breaks the law; little strains it.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Consciousness is held fully, one disaffected interior across twelve songs. The couple is held in Apartment Story, Slow Show and Start a War. The professional life is costume and anonymity in Mistaken for Strangers and Brainy, friendship is drift in Green Gloves, and the family is one settled life in Racing Like a Pro. These are held, not listed: one consciousness joins them, and each is a form of the same shelter. What holds the figure here is the rest: the state and its war are only pressure under the surface, the sacred is a title, and nature, history, the body beyond drink and sleep, and labour as labour are absent. The orders present lie close together: one class, one city, one decade.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.2 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Living Form at 8.7, then The Unconcealment and The Made at 8.6, then The Inevitable and The Inner Law at 8.4. A form whose restraint is what the record knows; a disclosure that can be stated and holds, a private shelter that is also a way of not being awake; a close, legible recording driven by drums that do the work of a lead instrument; twelve songs of which only two are not compelled; and one law, pressure held under a calm surface, from the public night of the opening to the private hush of the close.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.3: consciousness, the couple, the professional life, friendship and one family are held and joined by a single interior, but the state and its war are only pressure under the surface, the sacred is a title, and nature, history and labour are absent; the orders present lie close together, in one class, one city and one decade. Below the rest, The Swerve at 7.5, where the turn is from the band’s own previous record on ground its tradition had cleared, then The Archetypal Deep and Pressure on Tradition at 7.9: shelter is carried by the sequence with no figure to bear it, and the register the record refined had been shown before, with part of its reach the band’s.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.4 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.7, The Made at 8.6, The Inner Law at 8.4, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Unconcealment at 8.6 clears the bar of 8.5, but The Imperishable at 8.3, Pressure on Tradition at 7.9, The Archetypal Deep at 7.9 and The Swerve at 7.5 fall short. The Universal Minimum is met exactly, since The Swerve at 7.5 is the lowest axis it counts, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.3.
Basis · Boxer as released by Beggars Banquet in May 2007, twelve tracks in their original order, about forty-three minutes, judged from knowledge of the recording, its lyrics and its reception; no recording or lyric sheet was in hand. The album is the unit. Live performances, reissues, the band’s tours and the later use of its songs are used only as evidence of its return, reach and survival. The lyrics are paraphrased, and only titles are quoted. Facts that could not be verified, among them the day of release, the studio, the arranger of the strings and horns, guest players, the lengths of the tracks, sales and the later uses of the songs, are not given.