Album Rating: 4.0

Going back a few pages - I’m mostly with Doof on the melody thing. Melody does not have to mean “catchy” or “poppy”, come on Row. Listen to the old National stuff and you realize a lot of it stands out because of just how dark and often mysterious Matt’s melodies are. Femvox are naturally “prettier” and can mask weaker melodies more easily than Matt can but very little stood out for me in the vocal melody department - which is just continuing a downward trend in that area begun on SWB.

Album Rating: 3.0 | Sound Off

No grudges at all. This reminds me of my reaction to Amnesiac which was also a ‘take five songs and burn the rest’ deal.



I still like a bit of Radiohead. These boys are fine with me.

Album Rating: 3.0 | Sound Off

I’ve already made a mash up of the last two albums called ‘I am easy to beast’ that I’ll probably reach for ahead of these last two. The middle of SWB has always depressed me a bit.

Album Rating: 4.0

dust - that doesn’t mean the project as a whole wasn’t rushed, the band gave Mike Mills demos of about half the tracks here from which he constructed and made the film, then they continued to collaborate to finish the rest. My theory is that the whole album/film joint project got going with more momentum than they intended and the film was finished sooner so they rushed this out. As Doof said there’s very much a “throw everything at the wall” feeling here and I’m not convinced they couldn’t have taken a bit more time to refine the album project.

Album Rating: 2.5

I could go through a bunch of the tracks here and find older tracks with the same vocal melodies/diction but it would definitely make me sad

Album Rating: 4.0

Totally agree there Doof - in fact in a lot of ways I can see this being the Amnesiac to SWB’s Kid A.

Album Rating: 4.0

I see, that definitely makes a lot of sense and squares with the interviews I’ve read too

Album Rating: 3.5

In an effort to be more conservative with my handout of classic statuses, I'm going to deliberately give this obvious classic a 4.7 and sit on it. This is like, the perfect album though. I'm totally enthralled and in love with this thing to the point of giddiness. Might be the band's best album yet.

Album Rating: 3.0 | Sound Off

Boney, I’m pretty sure this will end up either a 2 or a 2.5 rating from me - either the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ side of average, the sort of average I still have time for or the sort of averageness I don’t.



But I’m 99% certain this is some sort of average taken as a whole package.



Individual moderate highlights remain.

Album Rating: 4.0

Interesting - it almost seems like the hardest fanboys are the ones having the hardest time so far

Album Rating: 3.0 | Sound Off

‘might be the band’s best album yet’



Love you Sowing

Album Rating: 2.5

this was obviously too flowery for grumpy cat

Album Rating: 4.0

No National album has been an instant classic for me so this certainly won’t be either - the real teller will be how it has aged in 6 months.

Album Rating: 2.0

I'm shocked how many people have rated this, were you all listening prior to release or something? If there's one thing I know about this band, I couldn't possibly rate one of their albums after the first spin; and likely not after the next couple either.

Album Rating: 4.0

Demon - it leaked 3ish days ago

Album Rating: 3.0 | Sound Off

I liked all National albums since Boxer a lot on first few listens

Album Rating: 1.5 | Sound Off

I usually like their stuff but this made me almost fall asleep, this was boring beyond belief.

Album Rating: 2.0

High quality leek? Oh right. Yeah I never notice these things, always just wait till the official release. I know staff reviewers might get a pre-release copy... otherwise I was just curious.

Album Rating: 2.0

Been listening to this nonstop for three days now, yeah. Still think it's a little more consistent than SWB, though, of course, I adore that album too. I get the criticsms with melody but I'm a big aesthetic guy and this is just captivating. It feels so bright, so lively, almost whimsical even. That The National of all bands manage to pull that sound off is amazing.

Album Rating: 2.5 | Sound Off

Same as Demon, I will need some 5-6 more spins to give it a proper rating