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...according to our Brian on Thu 06 May, 2010.
Who the National are is anybody's guess, they've swooped over my radar and nestled in the international "mature" indie higher echelons with ease. They look like a bunch of old acid head dudes largely, if the unflinchingly stark portraits of them inside the sleeve are owt to go by. Musically, they play heavy-hearted anthemic American rock with some cracking understated wistful melodies & bristling atmospherics. It all sounds incredibly austere & very New York. If Interpol had babies with Tindersticks the resulting offspring might well come out sounding something like the songs on 'High Violet'. I was expecting to dislike this but there's a serious depth & craftsmanship to these tunes and the song 'Anyone's Ghost' is making me feel a bit weepy. With such a dull name I expected the music to follow suit yet i'm quite taken by this warm-hearted, sad-eyed collection. Nice one lads.
• The eleven tracks on The National’s new studio album ‘High Violet’ were recorded at the band’s own studio in Brooklyn, with further recording and mixing at Tarquin Studios in Bridgeport, Connecticut with Peter Katis. On the live front, The National will be making a one-off UK appearance at London’s Royal Albert Hall in May, and tickets for this date sold out immediately. Further shows and festival appearances will be announced soon.
• The music on ‘High Violet’ is wide-ranging in its moods, by turns intimate and rough, expansive and spare, full of stark angles and atmosphere.
•Matt Berninger’s singing - wild, half-broken, sly - evokes a feeling of being haunted, by love, by paranoia, by something just out of reach. ‘High Violet’ may be The National’s most thematically twisted record to date but it somehow also manages to be their most infectious and immediate.
Terrible Love * Sorrow * Anyone’s Ghost * Little Faith * Afraid Of Everyone * Bloodbuzz Ohio * Lemonworld * Runaway * Conversation 16 * England * Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks
• ‘High Violet’ is available on CD and double LP. The album is also exclusively available to independent retailers on violet coloured double vinyl.
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