Even though there are some wildly different takes about their best/worst albums I bet if we did a weighted poll in here Boxer would win #1 by a lot just because so many people would have it somewhere in the top 3. Seems pretty universally respected Would be like that year when the guy who won the cy young was #2 on almost every ballot and people split about #1, someone help me out here
Similarly, High Violet winning best National album over Sleep Well Beast would be like when Giancarlo Stanton won the NL MVP over Joey Votto in 2017.
Boxer Alligator SWB IAETF Sad Songs TWFM HV S/t IAETF, Sad Songs, and TWFM is pretty much a tie for me but the rest is probably locked in for all time. Boxer is a near perfect masterpiece. Alligator and SWB are close (and both end with a masterpiece stretch). Next 3 are great but flawed. HV is fine. S/t is bad.
It was third for me and then SWB happened. I can take or leave Runaway & England and they put the wrong version of Terrible Love on there. no such missteps on Gator. the highs on HV are amazing though.
I include Sad Songs in the “classic” camp for this band. Maybe a shade worse than the ones that have come since, but like an 8 out of 10 among a bunch of 9 out of 10s.
disagree on both honestly. i think of sleep well beast the way i think a lot of people think of this record
SWB is the only one of theirs that has continually grown in my estimation. a lot of them i love as much as i did when i first heard them and a few have fallen off for me. SWB is a grower.
I agree with this. I wasn’t big on SWB when it came out and now I absolutely love it, whereas I really liked IAETF a lot when it came out and I never come back to it.
I think its weak material is pretty generic, but the best songs on it are tremendous. The opening 4 song run is right up there.
This is more or less my feelings on it - I think each of their albums has a few songs that i either don’t care for, or don’t like in the context of the album (especially as they write more and more piano ballads, which are all fine songs but there’s just more of them than i want there to be). But my favorite songs on SSFDL feel essential to the National in a way nothing off the self titled does, so i categorize it with the rest.