The National became popular in a very traditional way: by releasing some really good albums, then touring the hell out of them. They're boilerplate indie, free of hot new genre tags or feature-ready backstories, which is something their detractors derive great joy from pointing out. If the National are important, rather than merely good, it's for writing about the type of lived-in moments that rock bands usually don't write about that well. The characters in National songs have real jobs, have uninteresting sex, get drunk, and lie to one another. They do so during the regular course of a workaday week, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The National aren't "dad-rock" so much as "men's magazine rock": music chiefly interested in the complications of being a stable person expected to own certain things and dress certain ways.
On the National's fifth album, High Violet, those constraints are starting to wear on them, which makes a lot of sense: they wear on most people. In between patches of obtuse imagery, singer Matt Berninger sounds increasingly self-destructive. The record's upbeat numbers don't cheer him up so much as commiserate with him. All of this makes High Violet a dark affair, even for a band with a reputation for sad-bastard melodrama. The National have never sounded triumphant, but they can still be reassuring, with Berninger's lyrics acting as salves for our own neuroses. Six drinks in, tired of your coworkers, wishing you could just go home and laugh at sitcoms with someone? Maybe get laid? The National's got your back.
With an ever rising profile and plenty of indie-famous friends-- Sufjan Stevens and Bon Iver's Justin Vernon guest here-- the National were afforded the opportunity to obsess over High Violet. They could've holed up and recorded an idiosyncratic, expectation-defying mess. Instead they produced an ornate, fussed-over record that sounds like no one other than themselves. Given the amount of flack they take for being a no-frills bore, simply refining their sound was arguably the braver option. They miss, occasionally-- the string-drenched closer, "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks", is too decadent for its own good-- but mostly, they construct gorgeous, structurally sound vignettes. There are few bands that could craft a song like "Sorrow"-- in which emotion acts as a character and the band turns Berninger's balladry into a well paced jog-- without stumbling over their own ambitions. The guitars on "Afraid of Everyone" actually sound nervous; "England" speaks of cathedrals over properly magisterial drums. These are triumphs of form.
Berninger is still, for the most part, a socially obsessed claustrophobe. He has upper-class guilt on "Lemonworld" ("Cousins and cousins somewhere overseas/ But it'll take a better war to kill a college man like me," "This pricey stuff makes me dizzy"). "Bloodbuzz Ohio"'s magnificent chorus ("I still owe money/ To the money/ To the money I owe") addresses the familiar, harrowing financial burdens of adulthood. He's best when he tones down the angst in favor of reflection or confusion. High Violet seems less likely to engender the personal connections of Boxer, but it's also bigger and more engaging-- a possibly offputting combination for a band following the footsteps of Echo and the Bunnymen, Wilco, and Arcade Fire. After all, eagerness often trumps execution, and the National aren't immune: For his part, Berninger looks increasingly like Dos Equis' Most Interesting Man in the World, and his cryptic lyrics seem like an application for the title.
But the National rarely miss; when they aim for powerful or poetic, they get there. High Violet is the sound of a band taking a mandate to be a meaningful rock band seriously, and they play the part so fully that, to some, it may be off-putting. But these aren't mawkish, empty gestures; they're anxious, personal songs projected onto wide screens. Even if you don't consider yourself an upwardly mobile stiff with minor social anxiety, the National make it sound grand, confusing, and relatable.
