The National - HighViolet

Thu 3rd Jun, 2010 in Music Reviews

Terrible Love couldn’t be more aptly titled. Opening The National’s High Violet, it’s like facing a sunny day with a brutal headache. It’s a beautiful and melancholic, sad-eyed song marked by gentle minor chords and graceful piano.

However, the heavy-handed production results in a gluggy final mix that distorts the slow-build crescendo so violently it ends up as a chaotic mess of indefinable sounds and it’s all the more heartbreaking for it. Not because a great song has been ruined (although there are plenty that will believe it has), but in conveying a sadness that administers a hefty kick to the emotional guts. The production takes a good break-up song and turns it into something altogether more chilling; a haunting that will stalk you for days rather than dissipate the moment you start contemplating what to have for lunch.

The effect was clearly intentional. The album’s production doesn’t feel like an afterthought or a broad mission statement for the mixing desk. It’s an integral part of The National’s story telling; a shape-shifter that etches Matt Berninger’s burdened baritone onto guitars that tremble like anxiety plagued hands during Sorrow or creates a bleak emptiness out of Bryan Devendorf’s hollow drums on Anyone’s Ghost.

Much like its predecessors ( Alligator and Boxer ) High Violet doesn’t play in the shallow end of the thematic pool. The bawling rage of youth, epitomised by Alligator’s Mr November, is superseded by maturity’s millstone. The claustrophobia of parental responsibility collides with the tattered remnants of a family left stained by separation and sorry yearnings for nerve-numbing medication.

With unchecked anger cooling under the chill of adult demands, Berninger has no need to prove his point with bleeding histrionics. His voice is a hypnotic abyss that barely moves a muscle and yet has total command over the whole album. Bloodbuzz Ohio’s soft propulsive drums and earnest piano roll in at a crisp pace, but Berninger is unfazed. Lines such as “I lay my head on the hood of your car” are delivered with unflappable poise and the even-handed control of someone anaesthetised by pain.

The National may place its front man firmly at the heart of High Violet but it’d be foolish not to pay close attention to the recording’s deftly crafted detail. The album’s excellence owes much to the subtlety with which it underscores its dark and seemingly spartan songs.

Building on the delicate in-fills that peppered 2005’s Boxer, the ebb and flow of bassoons, the fluttering of metallic harp strings and discretely blooming brass add poignant accents to plaintive pleas. It would have been incredibly easy to allow the orchestration to stomp all over the album. It’s therefore a relief to see the band avoid epic bombast in favour of these clever nuances that are far less shameful in their drive for an emotional punch-line.

The increased confidence with which the band handles tonal shifts makes High Violet not only a worthy follow-up to the impressive Boxer, but arguably the most accomplished release to date. The National prove their aptitude for creating brooding masterpieces – High Violet takes that a step further with an album that uses an intelligent spectrum of sounds to tell stories that will leave an indelible mark on your psyche. If you can listen to High Violet without hearing your own heart break, better check you still have a pulse.