audio addiction

I may have broken the rules. Just a little.

"Sorrow found me when I was young. Sorrow waited. Sorrow won."

The National's High Violet was not one of the three albums I selected to spend time with this week, but..

"I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees."

I just couldn't wait another week to check it out.

"I never thought about love when I thought about home."

Perhaps part of the problem is that Boxer was so excellent. I listened to it a lot. I went to see them in concert. I listened to it until it made me sick. Then I listened some more.

"Tired and wired we ruin too easy."

Then I spent all of my free time at work last week reading about their follow up. The New York Times website featured a lengthy article about the band and streamed the entire album a week before it's release. I read their Wikipedia page at least three times. Pitchfork followed the band's every move in anticipation of the new release and then predictably listed it as a one of the best offerings of the year the day it was dropped in stores.

"I'm a confident liar. Have my head in the oven so you know where I'll be. I try to be more romantic. I want to believe in everything you believe. I was less than amazing. I do not know what all the troubles are for. I fall asleep in your branches. You're the only thing I ever want anymore."

And what you may not realize about The National is that their music seeps into you like water until all the free space in your head has been filled with their lyrics. It's a slow process. A "Slow Show" if you will (that was in poor taste, I know). One listen is innocent enough. But you can't just listen once.

"I wanna hurry home to you, put on a slow, dumb show for you and crack you up so you can put a blue ribbon on my brain. God, I'm very very frightening. I'll over do it."

I won't go on about how unique Matt Berninger's baritone is. I won't bore you with ramblings about how his lyrics seem to be just as unique, confessing the thoughts and feelings of the committed, the married, the middle class, the suburbs, the bored and the exhausted. You don't need me to tell you how this separates The National from their fellow indie rock bands.

"With my kid on my shoulders I try not to hurt anybody I like."

In my opinion, it's obvious how and why this band is different.

"I still owe money, to the money, to the money I owe."

After four days of listening I wake up in the morning with these lyrics running through my head. Well, not just these lyrics. It's any number of words from both Boxer and High Violet because, of course, I had to go back and listen to Boxer to compare it to the new album.

"We're so disarming, darling. Everything we did believe is diving, diving, diving off the balcony."

It's usually just one line. Then another will pop up later in the day. Then another. I really have no choice but to listen to these songs over and over again, just to get the lyrics out of my head. But this is by no means torture. Somehow The National have found a way to make music that doesn't get old. I can't stop listening. I don't want to stop listening. It's about more than just the lyrics and Berninger's vocals, of course. The drumming is pristine. The piano and horns are sprinkled in just right. The steady roll of the guitars is perhaps just as mesmerizing as Berninger's baritone. It's the perfect storm. It's night time, you're "six drinks in" (as Pitchfork describes it) and this band has somehow made a soundtrack for a life that is not quite your own but is close enough to it that it's soothing.

"Nowhere that I thought I'd be by now. My head is a buzzing three star hotel."

They have a way of making things sound the way I often wish things would in my head.

"You're all humming live wires under your killing clothes. Get over here, I want to kiss your skinny throat."

So, consider this both a warning and a recommendation. It will stick with you. And you will like it.

"I was afraid I'd eat your brains, cause I'm evil."