A strange thing happened in a music copmany a little while back. Someone proposed the idea of launching CDs specifically and uniquely tailored to individual consumers who had shown good support by buying loads of CDs and downloads over the years, and was reckoned to be owed something back in return. The CD would be designed with them in mind, and if others liked it and bought it too, even better!
The record company decided to pilot this unprecedented and pioneering scheme by picking an unspspecting blogger in Cork in Ireland who seemed to deserve, for some reason, this great honour, and decided that the obvious collaborators in this secret scheme would be his current favourite band, The National.
They and The National collected a bunch of other folks he likes (including Antony, and Sufjan Stevens and many more) to record new songs and picked some stuff he didn't know, but they really thought he would like. And then, when this was done, they picked a name which was almost comically evocative of the atmosphere of his favourite type of music, and was almost actually the same as that of a compilation tape he had made (filled with Nick Cave, Tindersticks, Joy Division and other happy ditties) almost 15 years ago. To cap it off, they decided to make the world a better place in the process by giving all the proceeds to HIV charities, to complete their selfless act. And then they launched it, and the blogger bought it, and he was a very very happy person.
This really, really happened. Some day, it might happen to you.
On getting 'Dark was the night', the first five songs I listened to, in order, were ‘So far around the band’ by The National, five times, in a row. Of course, it would be boringly predictable for me to say it is the best song on the album, but I am going to have to own up to boring predictability. It displays a new direction of sorts, still driven by Bryan’s propulsive drumming, but with a new lightness with woodwind whistling and all sorts of instruments I can’t name swirling around the song like rich perfume, while Matt’s vocals are clear and often beautifully complimented by subtle backing vocals. I really think this may yet become one of my favourite of their songs.
Of the many others, I am working my way through them and several have jumped out already, particularly by folks I didn’t know, like Buck 65 and My Morning Jacket. By the way, I think that given the general feel of the album, the term 'folk' seems broadly appropriate, although here folk has been taken in directions which many hardcore cardigan-wearing sandal-shod proponents of that genre might neither recognise nor approve of, drawing in both baroque and bar-rock, as well as electronic and even touches of rap.
Sufjan Stevens’ epic odyssey around the world of musical achievement (from his album-per-US-state master plan to his occasionally wonderful huge Christmas song boxset of a few years ago) appears to have brought him into strange territory (as evidenced on the 10-minute ‘You are the blood’) far from ‘Chicago’, while Arcade Fire’s ‘Lenin’ has a nice throwaway 80s poppiness to it. Antony and The National’s Bryce Dressner deliver a typically spine-tingling contribution, while Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian offers a lovely ‘Another Saturday’, which seems to be borrowed from a traditional air. Andrew Bird's take on the Handsome Family's gothic masterpiece 'The Giant of Illinois' is a fairly radical reworking, and a bit of a shock at first, like a head-on collision between classical music and dark dark country, but it is growing on me.
In fact, I have no doubt the coming days and weeks will draw me closer into some of the less well explored corners of this huge and dense collection but, for now, I just want to say thank you very much for this post-Christmas present, and keep up the good work!
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