My advice to people who find the National boring is to pay attention to the drums. The drums in almost every song are surprisingly intricate, and paying attention to them can help bring your attention to the rest of the things the song is doing.

Second piece of advice: find videos of them performing live. There’s an entire concert they had professionally filmed on YouTube, which is handy. They’re much more intense live.

All that said, I adore the National deeply, but I can’t begrudge people who find them boring. There are a whole bunch of indie bands who sound boring until something clicks in your head, and then suddenly they’re great. For the National, I think the drumming and the lyrics are often what makes them click, but it’s still just personal preference. Still, though, you should check out their live videos. They’re pretty great.

If Tegan & Sara never go on tour with Robyn in support of this album, it will be a travesty.

“Top Music Videos of 2012″ =/= “Most Popular YouTube Memes of 2012.”

Truth.

On the Stereogum list of “Stereogum Lists From Least To Most Accurate,” this is a clear contender for #1.

The fact that Pablo Honey was not placed in the top 3 proves that these lists are not designed exclusively as comment-rage bait.

However, the fact that Pablo Honey was not placed last proves that these lists are designed at least partly as comment-rage bait.

I have no real input re: the album rankings, but after watching this gif for about 3 solid minutes, I am confident in saying that that must be one of the most perfectly acted moments of all time.

Or maybe we need to accept the possibility of a record so excellent we don’t understand it yet.

No, but seriously, I think this article missed a nice opportunity to actually deconstruct what’s going on with this album. Instead, it’s basically just another review that says “I expected something grander, which this doesn’t deliver, so it’s kind of a disappointment.”

But why did you expect something grander? Furthermore, you admit that this album does sound differently, largely as a result of Jamie’s increased presence. Why is the production here a negative, then? And if this album does represent a restrained step forward from xx, which I think it does, is that not what we should have probably expected in the first place from a band whose entire aesthetic is defined by restraint?

And is this simply another case of an overhyped sophomore album, or is some aspect of our reaction specific to the xx? If a restrained step forward fits their aesthetic, and is nevertheless disappointing to the audience, does that say something about the band’s aesthetic? Does it say something about the audience?

There’s lots of interesting think-piece material about the critical reaction to this album, and it’s only really touched on here. Especially since I disagree that this album represents a particular disappointment, I would have been quite interested to see more analysis of that response, rather than a simple presentation of it.

We’re gonna need a bigger UGH.

There are very few objectively true statements in pop music criticism, but “‘Hey Ya’ was the best song released between 2000-2009″ is one of them.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. is an entirely unforgivable band name.

To be fair, these titles aren’t official, it’s just what mthrfnkr decided to call them.