Sunday, March 14, 2010

In frenzied anticipation of High Violet


I do not know of any other band today besides the National for which I would get really really excited by the prospect of a new album, but the word on 'High Violet', due on May 11, really has me counting days and weeks. This is the kind of excitement I guess I had a long time ago for lots of bands. I can remember friends of mine being incredibly excited about 'The Joshua Tree' in 1987, and sitting in a living room listening to a sneak preview of four of the tracks on a radio show in a state of second-hand euphoria.

Now I can pretty much know how they felt. Obviously, I became aware of the fact that The National had a new album coming through their e-mailing list months back, and heard about the title and release date a few weeks ago. Then, a few days ago the track list was released on the album website:

http://highviolet.com/

That track listing is as follows:

Terrible Love
Sorrow
Anyone's Ghost
Little Faith
Afraid of Everyone
Bloodbuzz Ohio
Lemonworld
Runaway
Conversation 16
England
Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks

Over the last 2 weeks, I have come to realise (even before the track list came out) that there were loads of the tracks on-line, and I spent many hours at work, doing computer stuff while youtube clips played repeatedly in the background. Having the traclist made the searching far more systematic and easy, and now I have 8 out of 11 tracks found, which I have put in below, in order, if for no other reason than to make it easier for me (and maybe others) to have them all in the same place.

Track 1, 'Terrible love', was the first one I found on-line, probably the lowest hanging fruit through Google, and the clip is from the Jimmy Fallon show. First impressions of the song are that it is consistent with all the signals about the album being harder than Boxer, and I like it. It is quite a statement of intent to to move from the piano start to 'Fake empire' starting 'Boxer' in gentle mode, to the loud guitars here





The next track is 'Sorrow', which has not quite grabbed me yet the way some of the others have (although the guitar line is lovely), but I will give it time:






Likewise 'Anyone's ghost' is one of the newer ones I have found and has not had a huge impact yet, but I have do doubt my expectations of every song on this album may be a bit high!






I do, however, love already 'Little faith', the start of which switches from more loud guitars to a lovely piano riff and predictably great drumming, and I really like the way the guitar comes to the fore again at the end:







'Afraid of everyone' is not available out there yet (but i will paste it here when I get it!).

'Blood buzz Ohio' is so far my favourite track, perhaps predictably given the great drumming at the start; nothing I have heard so far has other than added to my conviction that Bryan Davendorf may be my favourite musician in the world today. This one really got into my head this week, particularly the line 'I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees', for some reason.






'Lemonworld' is not available yet either, and hopfully my immediate word-association wth U2 will not be too closely borne out!

There are, on the other hand, a number of versions of 'Runaway' out there, of which the below seems to be the best, being in a radio studio as opposed to recorded live; this is a lovely one, very reminiscent of 'Racing like a pro' from 'Boxer':






'Conversation 16' is not available yet either either, but 'England' is and again I really like this one. It does display the band's habit of building songs around quite repetitive lyrical constructs, and he song does go on maybe a little long before it changes gear towards the end and some really cool growling starts. This album is not going out on set of gentler ones like 'Boxer' did, as this breaks up the slowdown which 'Runaway' started:





The final track is 'Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks', which has also really worked its way into my mind (has an unusually - for the National - sing-along chorus I can imagine working really well in concert), and reminds me a lot of the mid-paced ones on Alligator, such as 'Karen' and 'Daughters of the Soho riots'.





I found a review of a show with much of the new material, including several of the clips above, at:

http://www.hitfix.com/articles/2010-3-12-the-national-preview-new-high-violet-material-at-tiny-bell-house-show

and some interviews about it at:

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2010/03/the-nationals-high-violet-get-release-date.html

and with Matt himself at:

http://pitchfork.com/news/37727-nationals-matt-berninger-talks-new-lp/

I will keep this post updated as it would be nice to get the full album in advance. It is really wierd to get to know the songs this way, and I cannot think of any other album I have got to know live first before the album came out - basically, I do not think this could have happened before the Internet and the efforts of so many people at concerts with video cameras and access to Youtube. I am sure the real versions may well sound quite different, particularly when studio effects and flourishes that will not come across live are present; also most of the live versions tend to have the vocals a bit buried in the mix, making Matt's lyrics even harder to decipher than usual. I have been a little disappointed to see that the songs to date do not, in my view, follow the really interesting direction hinted at on 'So far around the bend' from 'Dark was the night', which was somehow non-rock and almost unique-sounding, whereas these songs are generally more direct.

Anyway, I am sure I will love the album versions, and it will be nice to get to know the real things after this strange on-line courtship.

1 comment:

G Valentino said...

Hey:

I was at one of the shows at The Bell House and posted my review here (no videos though): http://www.gvalentinoisrandom.com/2010/03/national-bell-house-brooklyn-march-12.html

I gotta say that Terrible Love on Fallon was actually pretty poor compared to the performance we saw of it at The Bell House, where it just seemed to fill the whole room and take it on a ride.

 
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