“Fake Empire” by The National

"Fake Empire" comes from Boxer, the 2007 album by Brooklyn's The National, their fourth, and it went out as the record's third and final single in June 2008. Bryce Dessner built the music around a puzzle: a four-over-three polyrhythm on the piano, so the song feels like it's walking in four while it's really counting in three, with chords he kept almost nursery-rhyme simple. Then Padma Newsome's horns rise up in a minimalist fanfare with more than a little Steve Reich in its blood.

Matt Berninger's lyric plays against all that quiet precision. It's a portrait of a generation that has drifted off into disillusion and apathy, delivered in a murmur so calm it almost sounds like comfort, which is exactly what makes it sting.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.