Det handler om The National’s High Violet, der udkommer i morgen. Albummet blev fredag anmeldt negativt i engelske The Times, der kun kvitterede med to ud af fem mulige stjerner. Lørdag glimrede avisen så med en ny og markant kortere anmeldelse, der denne gang tildelte pladen maksimale fem stjerner. Underligt…

May 7, 2010
The National: High Violet **
Pete Paphides

Spare a thought for the hapless hack who had the temerity to ask the National: “How does a totally unknown band like you sell out the Albert Hall?” The question so irked the group’s frontman Matt Berninger that he later saw fit to raise the matter with another journalist. “I was like: ‘We’re not unknown!’ But whatever.”

While not wanting to rain on his parade, it ought to be pointed out that being unknown and playing the Albert Hall are by no means mutually exclusive. Just look through the list of acts who have passed through its portals in recent years. It’s a roll of honour that starts with The Who and ends — in the case of Be-Good Tanyas and Show of Hands — with “the who?”

As for the National, the situation is changing daily. Three years after their fourth album Boxer peaked at 68, the buzz surrounding the Brooklyn-based Ohio quintet is that, having had their brooding, literary indie-rock road-tested by a cult audience, they’re ready to join the big boys. Bruce Springsteen has them on his iPod. Fake Empire, the opening track of Boxer, was on a Barack Obama campaign film. R.E.M. are fans, too. When both bands recently stayed up drinking at Bono’s hotel in Dublin, Michael Stipe suggested that all the National needed to do now was write a pop song. “What are you afraid of?” he reportedly said. “Don’t be embarrassed.”

Perhaps by way of mitigation, Berninger later responded: “I think Anyone’s Ghost is kind of like a pop song.” As it happens, that song is probably the prettiest on this oddly unyielding affair, its choral refrain melting into the spaces between Bryan Devendorf’s robotic drumming. But anyone searching these songs for the National’s Losing My Religion may be gone some time. As tends to happen with bands whose audience is growing at an exponential rate, the songs here assume a scale and import that would sound hubristic had they come from the mouths of newcomers. Even at the best of times, Berninger’s tarry croon isn’t naturally suited to conveying joy. Barely outlined among the watercolour hues of Sorrow and Terrible Love, he sounds like a man who can barely move for the weight of the horrors he has seen.

Anyone with records by the House of Love or Editors — groups whose vocalists spring to mind when you hear the National — will know that this alone doesn’t constitute a problem. What does, though, in the case of High Violet, is the stasis that pervades everything around Berninger. On Bloodbuzz Ohio and Conversation 16, Devendorf’s timekeeping provides the only sense of motion and urgency within an ever-present autumnal smudge of guitars and keyboards.

Over 47 minutes, this lack of light and shade conspires to short-change songs that in isolation would fare much better. The plaintive midlife melancholia of Afraid of Everyone warrants special attention, as does the tipsy closing-time valediction of Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks. However, the fact that they’re far too well camouflaged hasn’t stopped Q magazine from hailing them “America’s new greatest band” . Regardless of the virtues of this ponderously dull record, it seems that the National’s time has arrived. Fine, but that doesn’t mean Stipe didn’t have a point.

May 8, 2010
The National: High Violet *****
Kaya Burgess

New York quintet thrive amid beautiful melancholy

The National High Violet Few bands can create an album of such mournful beauty while sounding so comfortable in their own skin, but the New York quintet have grown effortlessly into their melancholy. It is the best of many worlds — the menacing baritone of Editors, the hopeless romanticism of Elbow, and splashes of piano and strings that lend an epic quality to such intimate indie ballads. The highlight is England, a love-hate ode to “life in the rain” that builds to a euphoric chanting climax.