The National's Boxer deservedly landed the group on year-end lists and magazine covers, helping the band spend the past several months selling out progressively bigger venues and gaining increasingly positive word-of-mouth support. But beyond all the plaudits and praise, you can most easily tell the National have made it to the top because there are so many people complaining they don't belong there. Alas, these days backlash is the true mark of the winner.
Still, not every victory deserves a victory lap. A slot touring with R.E.M. and Modest Mouse was healthy reward enough; in comparison, The Virginia EP, and in particular its companion film A Skin, A Night, feel unnecessary. One problem is that little on The Virginia is actually new or even unreleased. Rather, the EP works as a sort of souvenir, a reminder of the band's many highs over the course of the past several months, even if little on the disc actually comes close to matching those highs. Certainly it's less dull and disorienting than Vincent Moon's erstwhile doc A Skin, A Night, which comes off a belated electronic press kit. Were the band (or more likely its label) aware of the impact Boxer would later make, A Skin, A Night is the kind of thing that would have been sent out to drum up interest in a potential breakthrough act. Coming now, it's more than a little redundant and often boring. We know how the story ends, and the rudimentary sketches of Boxer's beginning don't exactly broaden its scope.
The three songs that kick off The Virginia EP would have made a pretty fine single themselves, with "You've Done It Again, Virginia", the stately (and Sufjan Stevens-adorned) selling point, bolstered by the tougher "Santa Clara" and the brooding "Blank Slate". "Mansion on the Hill" is an odd cover choice to draw from Bruce Springsteen's tailor-made-for-the-National Nebraska; at least the group does a nice job rearranging the song to suit its strengths. Of the demos included, "Tall Saint" seems closest to fruition. "Forever After Days" and "Rest of Years" less so, though comparing the demo of "Slow Show" to what ended up on Boxer, one suspects both those works in progress could have eventually made the cut. What's left are an unremarkable Charlotte Martin cover, "Without Permission", and a handful of live tracks and radio sessions: "Lucky You" is a welcome reminder to newcomers that there was a National even before Alligator, while versions of "Fake Empire" and "About Today" adequately capture the mix of poignancy and pathos that make the National so thrilling live.
But that's just what's missing here: the thrills. In fact, there's something even anti-climatic about The Virginia EP. Coming from a band powerful enough to change lives on the stereo or make you feel more alive while on stage, it seems oddly perfunctory. Not slapped together per se, but lacking the cohesive strength of Boxer proper. That's to be expected. That's what B-sides are typically for, after all-- material that for one reason or another is not quite A-level-- and indeed much of The Virginia previously made its way to various singles and other outlets. Yet taken together, these demos and live tracks don't add up to much more than a reminder that the finished product was much better than the sketches, and that the live tracks are no substitute for catching the band in person.
