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M. Campbell’s Top Ten Albums of 2010: The National’s ‘High Violet’ #9

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The National dug themselves out of their downtown apartments and sauntered onto the streets of New York City and wandered across the midlands to Europe and beyond with 2010’s High Violet .

The claustrophobia and paranoia of previous National albums gives way to an expansive melancholia and world weary beauty in High Violet that recalls a woozy marriage between the romanticism of Leonard Cohen and the gloomy gorgeousness of Joy Division and The Stranglers circa ‘Golden Brown’ and ‘Always The Sun’. Lead singer/lyricist Matt Berninger constantly teeters on the edge of exhaustion and exhilaration, observing the world thru a mesh of dream and grim reality - love among the ruins. When the heaviness starts to get too heavy, The National lighten the load with melodies that can make even the dourest of drunks swoon.

As gothic and sumptous as a Patrick McGrath novel, High Violet is my choice for one of the best albums of 2010 at number 9.

You said it was night inside my heart, it was
You said it should tear a kid apart, it does

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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12.02.2010
02:36 pm
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