Best of 2010: #8 The National - High Violet

In 2010 the ennui of thousands of grump out of work or under paid, under loved (occasionally over loved), white men between the ages of 25 and 40 can be audibly identified on High Violet, the fifth album by the National. While Arcade Fire were making some sort of big statements and headlining MSG, the National were sort of saying nothing, but sonically representing everything for a particular angst ridden crowd. That’s the power of this cryptic, mopey band, and it is also their great weakness.

Around April I was feeling very much of their ilk and anyone asking what I was listening to would have been told about the National. But, as I often do, I also might have said it’s not for everybody. In fact, I can’t recall myself telling anyone who bothered to ask unequivocally that they would love the album, in spite of the love fest I was having with Matt Beringer’s baritone at that point.

And I still love this album. The slow burn opener “Terrible Love” feels trite until you realize how little it’s giving up. If this were a Springsteen song we’d be expected to follow narrative and character, instead we’re left with repeated non-descript fragments, open to inferring whatever “spiders” you may or may not be walking with.

Musically the National are all at their best. There’s the subtle groove of “Anyone’s Ghost”, the chiming melodies of “Lemonworld”, the doom and gloom peak of “Conversation 16.” Really, there’s hardly a bum note on the whole thing. (A lot of bummed notes though.) Who knows, you might actually like it.

The National 'High Violet' Review - Originally Posted on Pop Tarts Suck Toasted

Vanilla as a flavor(and as a euphemism for a certain taste of art or personality) is underrated. There is something about clean, solid, reliable, singular taste that often is far more satisfying than all the bells, whistles, hyphens and sprinkles you can add to a sound or a sundae. Many people have found the National with their steady tempos and low melodic range to be too vanilla(or in the case of our editor often outright boring). I however have always marveled at their particular flavor of indie rock.

This is plain guy rock that understands the working class frankness of Springsteen and the baroque charm of early R.E.M. It takes the urban clatter and conversational vocals of the Velvet Underground an combines it with the austere layered arrangements of big league postmillennial indie(re: Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens). If this is vanilla it is because the National have taken the sums of their parts and made it into a solid flavorful whole that is as singular a sound as any American rock band has hit on in decades.

High Violet has all the things you expect from the National, really the only things you expect, and somehow is still able to bowl over expectations. Matt Beringer still mopes and smirks at the nuances and nuisances of modern relationships and dead end jobs. (A great charade considering Boxer has sold 350k copies and he's allegedly happily married.) The band uses their instruments as nuch for atmosphere as for melody and rhythm.

While the steady build of fans and press coverage assures that this will be the National's biggest album yet, it is also worth noting that the record also owns more of it's 4AD pedigree than any of their previous records. "Anyone's Ghost" plucks along with a surprising post-punky bounce. "Terrible Love" is practically drowning in spacey noise; the Cocteau Twins would be proud. Almost all of the songs hint at the broken everyman melodrama that the Red Housepainters once traded in(but then that's nothing new). The seeping influence of minimal composers and noise sculptors is obvious and acts, to keep the Springsteen comparison going, much the way Phil Spector's Wall of Sound did for the Boss. It deepens the frank simple sons making them just the right balance of epic and ghostly.

For me the album highlight is "Lemonworld" a song that could have felt like a miserable dirge but ends up feeling sweet and breezy(if a bit somber). The drums find a place between groove and texture, the guitars chime making the subtle melodic shift between the verse and chorus seem nearly like a genuine pop moment. The lyrics veer from cryptic to weirdly specific, and are ultimately as relatable or inscrutable as you choose to hear them.

The sound of the National is at first hard to parse. Rock bands often wear a new sound or idea like flair on their coats, or feather boas. It's ornamental and ultimately superficial. Everything the National does has been puréed so that it can pass muster in the tight frame of "what the National do." The results are most definitely not boring, they are in fact one of the tightest most original sounds in modern rock. High Violet is their current high water mark and my current pick for the best album I've heard all year. Get it, enjoy it with some Häagen-Dazs.

My Live Weekend

This weekend marked one of the most anticipated Seaport free shows of the summer and the last free McCarren Pool Show. It was a diverse and mostly positive, if entirely too damp, weekend of live music. I will reserve my judgement of Takka Takka and The Forms, who both played heavily abbreviated sets in the rain on Friday. (but seriously I'm certain both of these bands are terrible.) Here's my ratings.

The National (Seaport) 89% - This band is going to be around for a while. They have sturdy songs and an impeccably towering sound without an inch of fat. Basically you will almost never see a National fan embarrassed for their band of choice, that's a lot to say in this day of genre hopping and retro kitsch.

YACHT (McCarren Pool) 90% - There is just something about a guy and his computer. The seeming insularity of computer based pop music once seemed sure to keep this genre from being any kind of a live experience. Well this has all shifted. Dan Deacon, Girl Talk, and YACHT put on some of the best shows around. YACHT surprised me, breaking out hilarious and jovial dance moves and giving an incredibly friendly question and answer session mid-set. (Check the photo on the side, I'm standing in the back smirking.)

The Cool Kids (McCarren Pool) 81% - Four songs is a terrible way to judge a live performance. The Cool Kids did everything they could with their time, I hope to see them again soon.

Spank Rock (McCarren Pool) 84% - Flossing, simply flossing.

The rest of The Baltimore Bass Connection (McCarren Pool) 82% - The whole Baltimore Bass performance was pretty impressive, But really I almost would have preferred single sets from all the performers. Not just Spank Rock and The Cool Kids, but Kid Sister and Betty Black Pase Rock.

Ghostland Observatory (McCarren Pool) 27% - It's sad that the last free pool party would end with this band. Initial good will was wide spread for this band but about three songs in (after the vocoder lost it's novelty) I realized that they sounded quite a bit like INXS. How am I supposed to hang with that?

My Weekend! Your's?

The National are playing the Seaport free tonight. I'm a hug fan of their new album, Boxer. I'm expecting a subtle but very enjoyable show from the local favourites. I'm also expecting to get at least two big bears from the sea food place in the mall food court.


Superbad, if I don't get to see this movie by tomorrow evening, I'm going to pretend I did anyway. I'm so effing excited about the impending Michael Cera super stardom.

The Cool Kids are sandwiched between The Rub DJ's and YACHT at this week's last (ever?) free McCarren Pool show. They will be playing as part of The Baltimore Bass Connection performance(which also includes the awesome Kid Sister). I'll be there, soaking up the sun and bands.

Top Ten Albums this Year so Far...

A year is best judged not in the albums that make lists but in the ones you just couldn't fit in. This year has that list has spiralled out of control and it's not even the fall: White Stripes, No Age, St. Vincent, Wold, Battles, Boris, Patton Oswalt, Deerhoof, Times New Viking, Justice, Arcade Fire, The Ponys, El-P, and Twilight Sad. To name the ones that I'm thinking of now. It's early and our cup runneth over. It's a great time to be an adventurous music fan ain't it?

10) Paul F. Tompkins Impersonal
Perspective is the key to comedy. Having a unique disposition and articulating that to an audience. On this, a run through some of his most tride and true material, Paul F. Tompkins does just that and his happens to be one of the most distinct comedic voices of our time. If you think the comedy album is dead you probably don't know much about comedy.




9) Panda Bear Person Pitch
Nothing is totally new. Not even the Animal Collective with their drum circles and Beach Boy harmonies and No Wave atonality can claim no forebearers. What they can claim is a totally new structure of what being in a band means. How else can you explain a band who can unleash one of the finest albums of the year as a solo album without even the slightest bit of break up suspicion. What Person Pitch does is to capitalize on the sweetest elements of earlier Collective efforts and drag them out into their blissful extremes. Extreme bliss music, this is avant garde?

8) The National Boxer
Subtle and boring live so close together they often seem to be one in the same. However The National know subtle and they don't give boring the time of day. The band, who once were upstaged by the hype around Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! and who this year decided to ride some opening slots for the hype machine around Arcade Fire's Neon Bible to wider press coverage, their hero moves (Matt Berninger's Mark Knopfler croon and esspecially those drums) that hit with the intensity of a single hair standing on end. Inspite of that they bring more drama than the fatalists in the aformentioned Canadian colective's latest and they do it with a sense of economy that makes this album cat nip for rockists. "It's a grower man."

7) Spoon Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Spoon are not peerless they just sit on a short list. Spoon and Yo La Tengo are the indie elder statesman at this point. And as a result they get alot of rope (ie: embarrasing album titles slipping into the market). But they also lose that luster that a newer artist might get. Instead they consistently release stupendous albums stuck to the lower rungs of year end (and mid year) lists. Ga is their best since that album that you liked better (Kill the Moonlight in my opinion) and like Yo La's last it has higher production values and more bells and whistles than any of their previous releases.

5 & 6) Deerhunter Cryptograms, Flurescent Gray

The rock and roll experience seems to change so much and yet in some ways so little. The buzz is still the same when a band comes along doing things you've heard before but allowing you to hear it with new ears. And watching a band hit it's stride is still feels as exciting as ever. Deerhunter hit their stride with Cryptograms, an album with an excellent grasp on the artsy vs. accesability divide. That wasn't enough though. They had to save four of their finest songs and a few shots of artistic growth for an EP released just a few months after the full length. Here's hoping they haven't blown their wad.

4) Marnie Stern In Advance of the Broken Arm
Zach Hill has done more to advance the prog influence on indie rock than anyone. More even than the Friedbergers. Creating time signature bending album rock with Hella on Kill Rock Stars released albums might have seemed unlikely ten years ago but this year the arival of Marnie Stern through that label's hallowed halls seems more destiny than quirky lark. Stern rattles cages shreds and shouts and closes out with the best high concept rock song of the decade. Some musicians empower you, make you feel like anyone can play, and some lay waist to your rock and roll fantasies and make you want to become a gym teacher. Marnie Stern is most definatly the latter.

3) Dan Deacon Spiderman of the Rings

With a noise rock sense of fuck-off-ery and a pop sense of melody theft and big idea bombast Dan Deacon has become the "it" party starter of the year. His statements are grand and yet self effacingly simple. This man may in fact be the electronic Ramones. Bald spots are the new helmut hair. Sweat stains are the new ripped jeans. Act accordingly and put your cameras away.

2) LCD Soundsystem Sound of Silver

Pop albums are fleeting, dance albums are even more fleeting and lack the cultural omnipitence needed to seem note worthy. Why then is the best rock hero invented post Eminem a dancey pop artist? How is it that the inspite of the death of the album James Murphy has been able to craft an hour of invention and splended repeatability? If you're not in love already there is no converting you. If you are there's no turning back.

1) Liars Liars

It's not out yet but this is the cloud of post punk fury is the elephant in the indie album room waiting to explode in your eardrum and make your face freeze in a palsyed state. Remember when They Were Wrong So We Drowned came out and sadened your sense of hope for this band? Then remember last year when Drums Not Dead curbed your fears and made you accept that Liars were no longer rock band?

Well they've decided to flip those expectations once again. From her on out they've established the precedent: no expectations. It's the Liars roller coaster and I'm on board. (The album "drops" August 28th)