High Violet by The National

 

The National pull off an interesting trick, balancing slightly goofy and confessional lyrics with a lush delivery that pulls you in and makes you care. Case in point: the beautiful “Conversation 16” boasts the refrain “I was afraid I’d eat your brains ‘cause I’m evil.” On paper, not so great, but delivered in Berninger’s characteristic baritone and underscored by the band’s dramatic arrangement, it totally works. This type of balancing act hasn’t been pulled off this well since… well, probably since Matt Johnson’s The The.

 

Mostly, High Violet offers more of what we’ve come to expect from The National, and we’re not complaining. The few experiments that exist on this album don’t always work (e.g., the distortion-heavy and somewhat muddled mix of “Terrible Love”)—an opinion the band seems to share, since they have already released an alternate “deluxe” version with different mixes of some of these songs—though some of the slight departures work better, like the Sufjan Stevens-inspired piano composition “England.” Oddly enough, the second half of this album seems much stronger than the first, after the band mostly settles into what they do best. All in all, The National deliver another solid album, and given its experiments, one that is likely to be followed by a great leap forward into the next phase of their sound.