BLOG: A Band Worth Listening To: The National

Adele Kieger, Staff writer|November 20, 2013

From the burly baritone voice of Matt Berninger–who also writes all of the lyrics of their songs–to the band’s consistent use of the keyboard, “The National” creates the most beautiful, melancholy, emotional, and relatable songs I have ever heard. They are notorious for creating those “screwed up romance” songs that everyone secretly loves.

My love for The National runs very deep. I was first introduced to them during the summer before my senior year of high school in 2010. My high school best friend who is a year older than me was going off to school in London and burned me a farewell CD with their song “England.”

This song is simply beautiful with its use of the violin and with a lyric that really hit home for me when I thought about my best friend leaving me, “You must be somewhere in London, you must be loving your life in the rain.”

After hearing “England,” I checked out some of The National’s other tracks, and this is when I fell in love for the first time.

“Slow Show”, a track from their 2007 album, “Boxer” is a track that has made several “Top Indie Love Songs” lists and is one of my favorite songs of theirs. With it’s heartening lyric, “I wanna hurry home to you, put on a slow, dumb show for you and crack you up, so you can put a blue ribbon on my brain. God, I’m very, very frightened, I’ll overdo it.”

And this lyric is when the keyboard chimes in and plays a beautiful melody along with it, “You know I dreamed about you, for twenty-nine years before I saw you. You know I dreamed about you, I missed you for, for twenty-nine years.”

Trouble Will Find Me,” which was released in May 2013, is the only album I have heard in which every single one of the tracks on it blew my mind.

From “I Need My Girl,” a track the band played at Lollapalooza earlier this year, when my boyfriend and I fell in love as he held me in his arms as we listened to the song, to the very emotional and relating track “This Is The Last Time,” with lyrics such as, “Oh, but your love is such a swamp, you don’t think before you jump, and I said I wouldn’t get sucked in, I… This is the last time.” Then there’s its heart-wrenching bridge in which Berninger shouts, “I won’t be vacant anymore, I won’t be waiting anymore!”

And don’t even get me started on how amazing they are live. They will even be opening for the Foo Fighters, a legendary band in my opinion, in New Mexico in December.

So if you are into bands like “The Strokes” or the newly popular band “The Black Keys”, or if you are someone who appreciates music with substance to its lyrics, The National is a band that you will definitely enjoy and maybe even fall in love with like I have. I plan on walking down the aisle to the instrumentals of The National’s song “England,” that’s how much of a fan-girl I am. But seriously, they are awesome and they deserve it.