vs.
For some reason, I see similarities between Andrew Bird's Armchair Apocrypha and The National's Boxer. The problem is that this comparison isn't favorable for either. The National have an immediacy and an urgency that makes their album seem better, while Bird is much more aloof, affecting a disinterest the way ill-advised guys think the surest way to impress a girl is not to show any inclination toward them. "Fake Empires" is Boxer's masterpiece, and a song that stands as one of the year's best (that brings the count to two, more to come). However, because "Fake Empires" is so transcendent, the common songs which serve as its profane context lose much of their luster. If this album were sequenced any other way, perhaps the more than serviceable "Slow Show" would rise to the top, but as it is, "Fake Empires" is the one. "Scythian Empires", on the other hand, is buried at the end of an album that is a very logical and seamless (I'd say "seemless" as a play on words, but that seems like the worst affront to Saussure I can envision) extension of Mysterious production of Eggs. Despite the musicianship, it is essentially one hour long yawn...infectious sure, but just to the point of more of the same kind. To take the metaphor to its overplayed length, Bird feels that the only way to circumvent (the old reacharound) the yawn is to acknowledge it through songs such as "Plasticities", a smirking nod to the alternate pronunciations to mean "things make of plastic" or "fake cities".
So what I'm left with is two albums that play like Interstate 86. Roughshod, in need of a lot of work, but beautiful regardless. One sings about "Fake Empires" in a much more "real way", and the other sings about real empires, all the while knowing that they may just be shadows on a cave wall (I mean, just look at the song titles associated with disbelief: "Dark Matter", "Heretics", "Imitosis"). Since we've been interviewing recently at work, and I've readopted my unfounded, biased, illogical ranking system, I will make the following projections:
End of Year Rank for Boxer: 12
End of Year Rank for Armchair Apocrypha: 10
2 comments:
You're fucking crazy. At this halfway point in the year, "Boxer" and "Armchair Apocrypha" are in extraordinarily close contention for album of the year.
I guess I failed to mention the backhanded compliments you paid to both albums... but still.
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