The National's performance of "Fake Empire" with Doveman on David Letterman a few years ago was one of those rare instances where Late Night television actually made me feel something. Now, a couple…   Read Story »

The National have a new album out today called High Violet. It's really good. This is its first official video for a song you've heard before, "Bloodbuzz Ohio." It was directed by Hope Hall, Andreas…   Read Story »

MGMT hit the Coachella stage playing their generally freakier Congratulations material in relatively human clothing, which prompted me to posit an aesthetic axiom: The weirdness of MGMT's music is…   Read Story »

We've given you our very positive Evaluation and all the water metaphors a grown man could ever need. Now you can listen to a high-res High Violet from start to finish and see where you stand on the…   Read Story »

We talk a lot about "anticipation" when it comes to new releases, but it feels like folks have been awaiting the National's High Violet with a special excitement, one that's picked up with each…   Read Story »

When we posted about MusicNOW a couple weeks ago, I mentioned I first learned about the Ohio festival via a 2007 video of Sufjan Stevens' moving take on "John Wayne Gacy, Jr.," which he did with the…   Read Story »

In Brandon's beautiful review of the National's excellent show at Bell House last month, he mentioned "Runaway," a song that will be the slow jam of 2010. We're still waiting on its studio form, but…   Read Story »

To summarize: So far we've heard "Bloodbuzz Ohio," watched the guys debut "Terrible Love" on Fallon, and caught "Sorrow" "Little Faith" and "Anyone's Ghost" at their Bell House show last month. Now…   Read Story »

Shaky YouTube video of Sufjan Stevens performing a haunting "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." at MusicNOW in Cincinnati is what first put the festival in the back of my mind. (That and the city's historic…   Read Story »

After attending one of the National's High Violet-related shows at the Bell House a couple of weeks ago, I sorta went off on the water imagery in Matt Berninger's lyrics. "Bloodbuzz Ohio," a song we…   Read Story »