Edition №1
I had no idea I lived a 10 minute drive from where one of my favorite albums of the last 20 years was being made.
Tarquin Studios is a 7,000-square-foot Victorian house in Bridgeport, Connecticut, barely 6 miles up the road from my house in Fairfield. Peter Katis bought it in 1998 and converted it into a destination for indie bands; his mix on Interpol’s Turn On the Bright Lights in 2002 was the credit that brought them in. He’s produced every album for The National since Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers in 2003. The band went there in summer 2006 to make Boxer.
The album opens with Thomas Bartlett (Doveman) at the piano. A descending figure in 2 voices, the top moving in 4s and the bottom in 3s. That’s a 4-over-3 polyrhythm and Bryce Dessner wrote the song around it. He told NPR’s Rhythm Section the pattern was something he had never heard in rock music. Bryan Devendorf’s kick enters on the threes. At 1:40 he rolls a tom fill and the song shifts.
That polyrhythm is now a signature sound for The National. Devendorf is the band’s only drummer, and his playing carries that off-kilter pull throughout the catalog, but on “Fake Empire” it’s right at the surface. The closest precedent in pop is Manny Elias’s drumming on Tears For Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” Same 12/8 time. Same trick of a hi-hat cutting against the triplets underneath. You hear it before you know what you’re hearing.
Bartlett had written about The National before they brought him in to play keys. He has said the piano part on “Fake Empire” was the first thing he ever recorded with them. He stayed on across the catalog, often without headline credit.
Boxer is The National’s fourth record. May 22, 2007, on Beggars Banquet. Paste named it the year’s best album.
The album almost didn’t get finished.
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