I absolutely adore the jackets to both Alligator and Boxer— the one color on black and white scheme seems to me to fit perfectly with the mood of both albums. Actually, I’m more than a little sorry that they abandoned the pattern when they released High Violet; as it is the three look great together in my cabinet, but think of how much better they could have looked together!
At any rate, although the two albums share on overall similarity in style, the differences are significant and they reflect, perhaps better than any jackets I’ve ever seen, the difference in the albums. Green was obviously the best choice for an album called Alligator, but Boxer’s yellow is a little more subtle if, I think, just as significant, since it evokes a sort of light-in-the-dark, chilly and urbane, that has sort come to characterize The typeface, too, is important. Although I wish I was enough of a typeface nerd to know what the two are called, the one that spells out “Alligator” is suggestive of motion, of highways, of thoughts that move back onto themselves and get stuck, while the one that spells out “Boxer” is much more staid, much more traditional, much calmer.
Those two things, though, are just details— the big difference in attitude, the change in the band that happened in the two years between albums, is represented in the difference between the cover photos. Alligator’s blurry, out of focus close-up of Matt Berninger under a ghostly chandelier fits well with “Abel” and “Secret Meeting,” with the slight madness and obscure wisdom of that album, whereas the clearly staged, incredibly well focused picture of the band performing in a dinner club not only suggests a tighter and maturer album, but also expands the view to include the whole band; without whom none of this, not Alligator, not Boxer, would have been possible.
If anything, then, Boxer, is the mark of The National’s maturation as a band, as a unit with members that hold equal importance and carry equal weight, and the evidence is there even before you open the album up.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Gotye & Passion Pit
#remix #gotye #passion pit #indie remix #indie shuffle
