Fractionals

The National's Boxer (out at the end of May) isn't going to upset Low's Drums and Guns from the top of my 2007 best-of list. But everyone else needs to watch out. I listened to it basically on repeat on the way back from the Russian Futurists/Junior Boys concert in Toronto Friday night and it's a fantastic record; their last didn't really get to me, but Boxer has the same kind of emotional resonance for me that Spoon's Girls Can Tell and A Hundred Miles Off by the Walkmen did. Which means it feels half-painfully accurate in terms of what my life is like right now, and Matt Berninger's voice splits the difference between Mark Kozelek and Stuart Staples beautifully to boot.

I don't normally bother posting about music I'm really into here (partly because I'm often reviewing it on Stylus, Maxïmo Park and Low for example), but these guys just vaulted over a bunch of higher profile contestants to be the indie rock record in 2007 that reminds me why I love/d the genre so. I like it so much I even finally changed the tagline at the top of the blog to something new, a line from "Ada" that's my favourite lyric in quite a while.