Important Albums of 2010: Part One

High Violet, The National

On the surface, High Violet can seem like a rather maudlin affair. The National aren’t exactly known for their feel-good hits and what “hits” there are (“Mistaken for Strangers”) don’t suggest anything more assuring. And while the album is downcast — the first two tracks alone are called “Terrible Love” and “Sorrow” — the songs themselves are elaborate and accessible, not weepy or sappy. The National come across as honest and ambitious, which in today’s landscape is a rare achievement.

The National has always been a band marked by their subtleties. Their third and forth albums, Alligator and Boxer, are slow growers that embed themselves over time. Like its predecessors, High Violet simply takes time and patience to parse out due to the band’s ornate arrangements. Given time, it’s a slow dazzle and the band’s most memorable set to date.

Everyone here brings their A-game. Matt Berninger’s baritone has a newfound maturity, managing to be both more expressive and restrained. Aaron and Bryce Dessner lay down some the most moving guitar work in The National’s catalogue and the rhythm section pounds away with expert precision.  But High Violet’s secret weapon is its gorgeous vocal arrangements; aching voices drenched in a cavernous reverb that sweep many of these songs into the ether.

The band maintains a high-wire act throughout the course of the album. The closing refrain of “Afraid of Everyone” is a conflicted repetition of “Yellow voices swallowing my soul, soul, soul, soul.” Such a dramatic claim could easily come off as ridiculous, but the music underneath is hopeful in the face of such dark humor.  As the song closes out a stirring guitar lead takes over (one that wouldn’t have been out of place on Turn on the Bright Lights) and you’re almost tempted to believe in those yellow voices.  Elsewhere, such as on “Runaway,” things remain stately and tastefully restrained even in the midst of sweeping strings.

The album’s zenith comes in the penultimate track “England.” The longing in Berninger’s voice as he sings “You must be somewhere in London” is carried to excessive levels of stunning by the band’s slow build atop an inspired piano and string part. It’s the kind of beauty you’d expect on a Sigur Ros album, and yet it remains anchored by Berninger’s poetic ruminations. And therein lies the balance on the high-wire. When the grandeur in High Violet’s music threatens to push things into a syrupy realm, it all becomes quickly grounded by concrete matters: talk of defending one’s family and being in some serious debt. This is music for real people with real problems. The band touches on the mundane aspects of life with such elegiac beauty that the album seems too genuine to be anything but universal. And in the end that is what’s so impressive; High Violet manages to show us that the ordinary can be transcendent.