Usually lyrics – even though I can quite easily sing along with them – mean nothing to me. When I am singing along (out loud or internally) it’s mostly phonetically. I just don’t know what most vocalists are saying most of the time, and don’t really care either. I notice lyrics of course, but with The National it’s hard not to notice them with that deep, rumbling baritone voice of this Cincinnati band’s lead singer. Up until this, their sixth album, I’ve never really paid that much attention to them, and even though they’re on the greatest record label of all time in my view, 4AD, their heyday is over, and thusly I don’t really take their endorsement all that seriously anymore. But this one I heard during one of my part-time shifts at Newbury Comics earlier this year, and one song made me realize I needed to take this one home and give it a full listen. The opening song, ‘I Should Live in Salt’, sets the tone lyrically and caught my ear right away, with a line so simple, “You should know me better than that”. To me, to start an album like that, it felt completely honest and genuine. It certainly isn’t anything groundbreaking, but at that moment it really hit home. When it comes down to it, at the core, The National make music that is incredibly schmaltzy, and very dramatic from one track to the next. But there is something so sincere about their delivery. They seem to sound grand without trying to be grand. Whereas a band like Coldplay, with each album they put out, gets bigger and bigger in their production as if to say, as loud and as boldly as possible, “we are romantic, caring, emotional people, can’t you tell?!”. With The National it just seems to comes out naturally and without effort. The songs take their time; the singer sings in his quiet, confident and sentimental droll. There is no need to reach to the rafters like other bands whose vibe can be considered quite similar. I say this because they remind me so much of U2 and Coldplay, but they do it with such an understated beauty. No grand-standing from my point of view, and it shows in their sound with a level of class that shines through and puts such egomaniacs like Bono and Chris Martin to the floor. It’s all a very romantic sound, and it’s all so subtle that at first glance you may think a lot of the songs sound the same, but they reveal themselves very slowly, as do the hooks, and with time the melodies and hooks become such beautiful earworms. From the driving, sliding groove of ‘Graceless’, to the sweet romanticism of ‘Heavenfaced’ to a song that drove me to tears. I had made a new friend, and this person became so important to me so quickly, and I heard this song – ‘Slipped’ – one morning driving to work and the sound and lyrics of it all made me think of what it would be like to lose her friendship, and it made me tear up. Songs don’t do that to me. Well sometimes they can, but only because a song is so good it baffles me and the sound hits me so hard I can’t fathom something is that gorgeous. But this song had the tears flowing from both the music and the lyrics. From me, that’s quite an endorsement. You definitely need to be in a certain mood to listen to this album. It’s not really depressing, it’s heavy. But past the dark weight of it all, there’s always an undercurrent of optimism that carries the songs to where they need to be (see ‘Humiliation‘ above). Gorgeous stuff.