Album Rating: 4.2

I found it to be pretty balanced, though maybe a little more percussive than this. A lot of the background melodies are very soft and pretty sounding, and it's an interesting dynamic with their drumming style. The first half is more rock-oriented and could be played on the radio, while the second half has more experimental rock and electronica. It's pretty seamless and consistent though.

Oh yeah I agree about percussive, it's Devendorf's most overt showing since Boxer imo

Turtleneck got The Nat doing their impression version of Raining Blood

Album Rating: 4.2

Turtleneck was pretty surprising to hear haha

Album Rating: 4.0

I'm about 80% through my first listen (of Sleep Well Beast) and I have no idea if I like it or not. I'm going to try to hold off on rating for a while because The National always grow on me and this feels a lot less immediate than TWFM.

Album Rating: 4.0

same here on first impressions, Sowing.. Carin at the Liquor Store though!!

Album Rating: 4.0

yeah right now System, Still Destroy You, and Carin have my emotions soaring. they're probs the 3 that stood out most to me but I'm just getting to the last track now so we'll see if that joins the early ranks or not

Album Rating: 5.0

y'all better replace the rip with high quality (still waiting on that)

Album Rating: 4.0

it's not exactly legit but you can stream the whole thing on goldenmp3

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

Or you can, y'know, wait just a couple more days.

Idk, I personally get really annoyed at this impulse so many people seem to have to be the first to hear something and have an opinion, especially when the first leaks of things are rarely high quality.

Album Rating: 4.0

it's only annoying to me if the people then proceed to write a review of it 2 hours later

being excited to hear something is human nature, and the stream is hardly a poor rip

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

It's not just reviews though, people are always talking about it in comments here too. The reviews are the most annoying though to be fair.

I've never heard of goldenmp3 so I'll take your word for it. But still it's a matter of principle for me. If the band put out a legit stream, I'd absolutely jump on it, sure. And in this case I love The National as much as anybody else here does; if I can wait, so can everyone else.

But obviously I can't control anybody's behavior. It just gets on my nerves a bit.

Album Rating: 4.0

I mean I get it (especially the part about sacrificing the quality of that first listen - you only get that experience once), but honestly as long as people give it a fair shot afterwards with the legit quality, I don't mind hearing a few hot takes in the comments section.

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

I guess part of it is that I'd like to have as unbiased a first listen as possible, especially with a band like The National, and while yeah I can just avoid the threads for a few days it's still frustrating. Again though it's my problem not everyone else's.

Album Rating: 4.5

The new one will be shit and we'll all 5 it a couple of weeks later. Tis the way with this band.

I didn't 5 this til last year, took forever to grow on me

Album Rating: 4.5

people say the national is boring

they say they are the tomato soup of music

they say: "the national more like national socialist black metal cause its dumb"

Album Rating: 4.5

all bloon btw

Anybody else listening to the NPR performance of the new album?

Album Rating: 5.0

I’m just afraid it won’t rate very highly. It’s fallen from the 4’s to 3.7’s in just a day on rym. Still staying high here but I doubt it’ll stay that way. Would love to see another 4.3 though. Deserves it.