The National - High Violet

This is easily one of my favorite bands currently making music and I’m amazed at their ability at combining so many relative, topical and poignant themes into one amazing ball of superb musicianship. And their music is the kind of music that just grows on you, like moss on a tree. Before you know it, you love the album and songs far more than you did a few months ago. Though I’ve been living with this one for a good month now, it didn’t connect until most recently.

The band is clearly highlighting how our lives are these black and white pictures with some gray sprinkled in and in the end, we’re fortunate if any color can find a way to break on through. Again, themes about dealing with life’s transitions – whether from high school to college, from adolescence to adulthood, from party animal to hard-worker driving the morning commute – are all delivered through the best possible music. But it’s those songs about love loss, where you find out that the one you love doesn’t love you in the same manner and how in the end, you “don’t want anybody else,” that hit the hardest.

Here is “Bloodbuzz Ohio,” about returning home but focusing on the negatives, instead of the love that is there and realizing that you’re way too far in debt to be pulled out of the water. And being carried home in “a swarm of bees”:


And here is the gorgeous “Anyone’s Ghost” (the song that I described about loving someone and they not returning the love, or being incapable):


Best album of the year? Well maybe so far…then again, Flying Lotus’ album is downright astounding. – Bryan