The big five are pretty much unrankable for me. Sleep Well Beast is my favourite and the rest could switch depending on the day
Oh yeah, sry, Boxer TWFM (is tops some days) Sleep Well Beast High Violet (feels criminal ranking so low) Alligator Sad songs/ST
Boxer thru Trouble Will Find Me is basically as close to perfection as it gets for a three album run for me.
Coffee & Flowers: A podcast about The National by Christopher Hooton and David Rapson on Apple Podcasts Also I saw Matt reference this podcast on his Instagram page. It looks like they will be doing an entire discog run, but right now they’ve got breakdowns and BTS for the writing/production of all the songs on Boxer. It was probably posted somewhere already, but it’s new to me.
I just love SWB so much. Always kills me to see people rank it so low. Just feels tighter than TWFM and moodier than HV. Boxer/Alligator are formative years records, so the others don’t stand a chance.
I'm so excited to see the film that accompanies this - feel like it'll add another amazing layer to the overall experience
I enjoy the Coffee&Flowers pod but i wish they didn’t do the thing of reading the lyrics and dissecting them in real time. It’s awkward to me, and you have this access to the band and the people around them why wouldn’t you just focus on them? I get that they kind of lay it out in the “Welcome & Why” episode but it still feels really weird and out of place.
I stopped listening after a few episodes because of this lol. I got insanely bothered by him reading repeated lines
Yeah! Like who recites lyrics that way lol the Apartmenr Story ep was the worst, it was almost entirely the two hosts just talking about the lyrics and then like 30 seconds of the actual content i was interested in.
Lawn was only $30 in Indy not bad at all. Seats were a little over the top...and not worth it at this venue
I was thinking about this quote re: the new album today. Matt said that, “Yes, there are a lot of women singing on this, but it wasn't because, ‘Oh, let's have more women's voices,’ it was more, ‘Let's have more of a fabric of people's identities.’ It would have been better to have had other male singers, but my ego wouldn't let that happen." There hasn't been a single instance of male voices other than his own providing more than backing vocals in their career, right? I know Sufjan Stevens has popped up on a bunch of songs from Boxer and onward, but as BVs only. I think sticking with primarily female voices to provide vocal contributions outside of the band is the way to go because Matt's voice is so distinctive you'd have to have something that's the polar opposite to be set against it imo.
Justin Vernon sings on Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks but and is credited with vocals on SWB but I can't think of any others.
Couldn't think of whom else it might have been but yeah I'm pretty sure that's Justin on I'll Still Destroy You and the title track?