Stay down, champion

Matt Berninger could easily fit Müshi's description of Mikael Rickfors - well, I'm not sure about the leather jacket, but he certainly has the stubbly cheeks and the alcoholic's voice. In fact music writers have compared his husky baritone to whiskey. And with his lyrics, he comes off as that rambling yet startlingly lucid drunk sitting in the corner of the room that somehow ends up in your head. Anyway, I don't think I need to sing any praises about The National - Boxer was released to pretty much universal acclaim, and made it's way onto a slew of year-end lists.

What I really want to get to is the experiences I've had listening to this disc over the past year. When the disc first came out last May, I was in a state that left me completely vulnerable to the devastating blows delivered by each track. Over the next couple months, it kept finding its way into my rotation. I saw The National in concert [twice!] and verified that yes, indeed, Matt is a veritable drunk. Then suddenly, I kind of forgot about them. I still put them on occassionally, but I forgot about the weight that had come with those first listens, and I actually started to enjoy the album even more, focusing more on the music itself, and the brilliance of their seemingly innocuous musicianship.

Last week, I popped it into the car stereo. I was on my home from another typical day at work. And of course, there was traffic. It occurred to me that I had never looked at the liner notes, which is weird, because that's a part of my process when I open new cd's. Maybe I was busy at work when that shipment came or something. In any case, I suddenly decided that I had to look at them. Immediately. I opened the case up to find "Stay Down Champion Stay Down" over a shot of the band standing in a field. And sitting there in traffic, all the reasons why I loved the disc in the first place came rushing back to me. I always thought that 'grower,' which many critics used to describe the album, had a bit of a negative connotation to it - as if the cd sucked, or maybe was just too difficult to sift through, on first listen. But now it just makes sense. This is the sort of cd that I can just get completely immersed in, the cd's that are why I even listen to music at all.

Since you made it this far, and this is a music blog, I'm still gonna plug em:
Start a War
About Today

the christening

when i was nine years old, i was all about mikael rickfors, a forty-something rocker with stubbly cheeks, black leather jacket and the dark, serious voice of a real man. well, or that of an alcoholic. the very first cd i owned was his debut solo album, named after the sensational hit “vingar” (wings).

i didn’t have my own cd player yet – hell, most of my country didn’t. (there are obvious advantages of having a dad obsessed with hifi). but my dad market it with my name and the tag “R-1” to make it compatible with his cd filing system. i wouldn’t allow anyone to listen to it without my permission, that cd was mine, and only mine. i played the first song over and over. again and again. i still know every beat of it, though i must admit i had forgotten about the spectacular narrative part in the beginning.

so what better way to start off this music blog than with the man who had me rocking out in front of my parents stereo, certainly not for the first time in my life, but for the first time as a music owner.

ladies and gentlemen. i give you mr rickfors. show some respect.