The National: High Violet
 

http://cdn.pitchfork.com/media/highviolet200_.jpg

1. "Terrible Love" 4:39
2. "Sorrow" 3:25
3. "Anyone's Ghost" 2:54
4. "Little Faith" 4:36
5. "Afraid of Everyone" 4:19
6. "Bloodbuzz Ohio" 4:36
7. "Lemonworld" 3:23
8. "Runaway" 5:33
9. "Conversation 16" 4:18
10. "England" 5:40
11. "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks" 4:12

This album is really growing on me. I liked it a lot the first time around, and now I'm liking it even more. I love it's mellow sound, and I don't think there's a single weak track on it. I adore Terrible Love, Bloodbuzz Ohio and Runaway.

I agree, it's extremely awesome from start to finish, without a dead track anywhere. I really liked Boxer, but this is better.

I find this album is like a snowball that someone gently let off the side of Mt. Everest. You start off maybe a little bit bored with it and you can live with it but you'd rather be listening to Able. After forcing yourself to listen to it again and again, it starts to grow on you until it's all you can listen to. Suddenly some poor Tibetan has been crushed by a ball of snow the size of the moon.

At least that was my experience the first time I listened to it. Probably others liked it right off the start.

And it's a good album too.

Eh this has yet to grow on me. I have to listen to it a bit more before I can really form an opinion on it.

Good thread.

And I wholeheartedly agree with above post. I actually listened to this around the time that it first came out. A big fan of Boxer, I bought it straightaway. At the time, however, I found the increased slow pacing to be offputting. It was moodier than any record I'd ever heard, and hence I found it 'difficult' to really like.

I returned to this album a couple of days ago, as it was an album that I had actually bought and so it felt as if I ought to try to make the most of it rather than discard it entirely. To my surprise, this time round the songs all felt eerily familiar. Some of them are truly brilliant, my favourite being Anyone's Ghost which I feel is a stroke of genius. The feelings, as expressed by the lyrics and perfectly complemented by the music, are so visceral you can almost touch them. The overall result is an impressive feat of songwriting by any standards.

I can understand somebody finding this difficult to get into, but once it 'clicks' so to speak, you feel baffled over why you never loved it to begin with.

That song sorta penetrated into my subconscious. I didn't notice it when I played it the first couple of times, but later, while driving or somewhere else, the tune just starts randomly playing in my mind. Haunting.

Not completely sure what it means though. Is it about a girl cheating on him?

Or maybe it's just about her being disattached from him emotionally?

The National don't normally write their songs to a specific story. Even though every time I listen to one of their songs I get a very cinematic effect, I also get the sense that these songs are written line by line and that every line has a million meanings.

In interviews, Matt Berninger has said that he really doesn't know what a lot of it means until after it's all recorded and he listens to it. Then it seems obvious what the song is about "apparently".