Album review: The National, 'High Violet'
Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 4)
Singer Matt Berninger plays a family man with issues on “Afraid of Everyone,” the most arresting and troubling track on The National’s fifth studio album, “High Violet” (4AD).
Over sighing harmonies and spasmodic guitar, Berninger paints a vivid portrait of paranoia in the space of a few lines: “With my kid on my shoulders/I try not to hurt anybody I like/But I don’t have the drugs to sort it out.”
Berninger has a way of describing characters who are coming undone; a woman is usually to blame, but not always. He sounds like a pallbearer. When it comes to making a bereft baritone sound both mortally wounded and somehow seductive, he’s in the first tier of modern vocalists, a close cousin to Joy Division’s Ian Curtis and Leonard Cohen.
Singer Matt Berninger plays a family man with issues on “Afraid of Everyone,” the most arresting and troubling track on The National’s fifth studio album, “High Violet” (4AD).
Over sighing harmonies and spasmodic guitar, Berninger paints a vivid portrait of paranoia in the space of a few lines: “With my kid on my shoulders/I try not to hurt anybody I like/But I don’t have the drugs to sort it out.”
Berninger has a way of describing characters who are coming undone; a woman is usually to blame, but not always. He sounds like a pallbearer. When it comes to making a bereft baritone sound both mortally wounded and somehow seductive, he’s in the first tier of modern vocalists, a close cousin to Joy Division’s Ian Curtis and Leonard Cohen.
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