NUMBER TEN
The National are a band that exist within a single idiom: sad man's mid-tempo indie rock. While their talents are enormous, their arrangements immaculate, their lyrics suggesting a upper-middle class profundity, and just generally a band of pretty great musicians, their albums from
Alligator to 2010's
High Violet have been crafted in that singular vein. That sounds like a bad thing; it's not. The reason why they've been able to get away with traversing that singular path throughout their entire career is because of just how fucking good they are working in it. It's been almost 12 years since the band formed, and
High Violet's opening track "Terrible Love" might just be the finest example of their illustrious career. It starts out National-y enough, with a workman's guitar riff and metronomic bass drum thwomp. But it doesn't take long for its depths to reveal itself, as delicate acoustic guitar notes, splashes of aching piano, and just the faintest notes of contrapuntal violin. And then, by the time we find out that it takes a fucking
ocean not to break, the song has exploded with the type of energy only held by the perpetually downtrodden, with the drums completely unable to hold together, the guitars ripe with dissonance, and Matt Berninger's passionate tenor acting as the song's lone anchor. The loneliness of the Monday morning commute has never sounded quite so epic.
Hit the break for the top nine songs of 2010.
