Album Rating: 3.0 | Sound Off

Deep End was really boring? Jesus, what do you guys even want from this band anymore

Album Rating: 2.5

Yeah I thought Deep End was great

Album Rating: 2.5

I mean, it's early in the morning. Maybe my opinion will change next time. I just remember listening to the first two songs and thinking "I don't get it, this is just as unmemorable as Frankenstein", but then things started to perk up on tracks 3 & 4 before I arrived at work and had to shut it off.

Album Rating: 2.0

Deep End is tired arse, but Alphabet City did get my ears pricked up

props to Rosanne Cash for the first National feature worth its salt in 2023

Album Rating: 2.5 | Sound Off

This site these days is a cesspool lmao

Album Rating: 3.5

turn off the house is so fucking good lmao

Album Rating: 2.5

yeah Johnny the Roseanne Cash song is great

Album Rating: 2.5 | Sound Off

Anyone expecting another Boxer level album is kidding themselves at this point but like, Smoke Detector, Crumble, Deep End and Turn Off the House gave me what I wanted from The Natty in 2023, I’m no longer mad at them.

Album Rating: 2.0

I think The National has had one of the worst career trajectories of any modern day indie rock band

Album Rating: 3.3

First listen to the new one was pretty positive - Turn Off The House was my immediate favorite but a number of the songs were notably great, and nothing I found atrocious.

Album Rating: 2.5 | Sound Off

nothing is atrocious but this has cemented the divide that was put up with 'SWB' - the nu-National effectively



as 'quite good' as the new album is it is 100% still the same nu-National thing



and that means there's something a lot less engaging about Matt and the drums don't hit like they used to and every composition and especially all the layering seems like it was put together by committee in some strange ass meeting around a boardroom table



something's just not quite 'it' and it feels unnatural/a lot of effort



basically the new album is a solid one from a 6 out of 10 band...but they used to be a 10 out of 10 band

Album Rating: 2.0

p much agreed with all of that. the long songs are both welcome bursts of energy, but for the first time since Sad Songs they smack to me of the guys compensating for flop songwriting with exercises in band chemistry. lotta pent up tension finding crude release there, not sure either will age *that* well

Alphabet City might be the most classic Matt moment on the whole thing though, hearing a faint echo of TWFM in the way his melodies creep up and down

Album Rating: 2.5 | Sound Off

Damn Doof pulling double time posting here and in the RYM comments box

Album Rating: 2.5

I feel like SWB isn't nu-National so much as the end of their golden era. That was still a stellar record.



IAETF was the first nu-National IMO, the first to feature some really bland and overly-processed sounding tracks.

Album Rating: 2.0

Yeah, I'd call SWB at least an experimental epilogue to peak National. Hit ratio was a bit scrappy on that, but the creative zeal was palpable in a way nothing since has come close to

Album Rating: 2.5 | Sound Off

Jonny - I appreciate what Matt's going for on 'Alphabet City' and very telling they put that song first as it feels like Matt trying to reconnect with his trademark delivery in a way...I'm still not major on it though, I'd still take an uncelebrated vocal like 'Demons' from him over what he's doing there every time.



Butkuiss - yeah I posted on RYM this morning...that's a very positive chat, people saying the new one is better than 'High Violet' or whatever, so I'm gonna let that go a while and run out of fumes a bit :D

Album Rating: 2.5 | Sound Off

'IAETF was the first nu-National IMO, the first to feature some really bland and overly-processed sounding tracks.'



The nu-National for me started on 'Empire line', 'I'll Still Destroy You' and a few other moments on SWB



Everyone loved those tunes...and they got a lot more of something very similar I feel. They're still probably the best examples of nu-National but they're not really why I listen to the band...epic climaxes, loadsa layering



When the band first appeared I felt they had kinship with The Afghan Whigs, Interpol, Tindersticks, Lambchop...



Now it's honestly more stuff like late career Kings of Leon and all the 'featured artists' on their songs, more MOR commercial vibe tbh



Again I maintain - I don't hate the nu-National, the new one earns a 'good' rating - but just when you try and find their soundalike contemporaries now it says everything and why their appeal has faded a lot for me.

Album Rating: 2.5

Agreed with Doof’s points about “nu-National,” somewhere between SWB and IAETF they stopped sounding like a band and started writing more like producers/arrangers in a way that I find much less consistently engaging. I do like Laugh Track though, early days of course but I think it’ll end up somewhere around a solid 3.5 for me.

Album Rating: 2.5

feel like you could fashion a 4.0 album out of some choice cuts on laugh track but only if you erase everything else following SWB

Album Rating: 2.5

I agree with Doof's points too! My only real hangup was on where exactly to draw the line between classic-sounding National and "nu-National". I also feel like they've become too commercial-sounding, almost like they're trying to cater to the coffee-shop faux-hipster culture (not a real thing, but the kinds of people who listen exclusively to what's hot on Spotify's Indie section because they think it makes them musically enlightened, same crowd that that got introduced to Bon Iver through Taylor Swift, etc) and I hate hate hate that. I also am generally not a fan of all the guest features either, although I haven't had much time with the new album yet so hopefully that can change (although seeing the same tired-ass names like Phoebe and BI is not encouraging).