The National... mood swings and poetry

What do you do as an artist if you sound like someone else? Where do you take your art if your own true voice bears close resemblance to a contemporary peer? If you're say, a youthful, musically ambitious Neil Young in '65 and Dylan's just released Highway 61 Revisited?

Earlier The National albums (this is their fifth) suffered by sounding a bit too much like the slightly more successful Interpol. I'd argue that you just stick at it; the art that survives is generally that which reflects the truth of both artist and audience.

This time out there's a more unique voice expressed. The National specialise in a kind of brooding indie balladry. Occasionally it can be macabre, elsewhere self-loathing, elsewhere again more hopeful. The lyrics have a kind of enchanting impressionistic feel and so they seem, perhaps , to be more of the REM school of indie, than being, say, Radiohead-ites. Matt Berninger sings with the self-assured, knowing baritone of Leonard Cohen, leavened with the urbane, louche, cool of Bryan Ferry. They use piano well, it gives the music an emotional base that swells and drops.

On High Violet songs are thoughtfully woven around simple melodies and fairly traditional musicianship. Opener "Terrible Love" hums and crackles, slowly building to a stately power. The simple four line chorus to "Anyone's Ghost" clicks inside your head and will never quite leave again, as does the lonely, struggling cry "Afraid of Anyone". The legacy-nerves they twitch in places have echoes of Springsteen, or Nick Cave, or Jesus & Mary Chain. The second half of the album is a little less inspired, "Runaway" and "Conversation 16" seem somewhat meandering. However closing track, the slow burning epic "England", about missing a friend/lover who is imagined to be somewhere in London, is more than worth the wait.

Current favourite is "Bloodbuzz Ohio", this time with not just piano, but horns too and thereby sounding a little like one of Springsteen's paeans to escaping New Jersey;

  I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees
  I'll never marry but Ohio don't remember me

  I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
  I never thought about love when I thought about home
  I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
  The floors are falling out from everybody I know

  I'm on a blood buzz, Yes I am
  I'm on a blood buzz,
  I'm on a blood buzz, God I am
  I'm on a blood buzz

(from lyrics: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/t/the_national/#share)

Given time to grow on you, The National gradually endear themselves. They're more virile than simple melancholy, and more hopeful than grey misery.

links:
Bloodbuzz Ohio - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxoHBK0Iq3M&feature=player_embedded