The National - High Violet

(4AD)

Over a ten-year spell, moody Brooklyn boys The National have been fretting over their souls and this messed-up world around them. The time to cheer up a bit is surely overdue with Interpol having long ensnared the miserablist NYC indie rock market. Muttering about spiders and ghosts and swarms of bees, High Violet aims at something dark and arch but simply leaves red faces all round. There are fleeting moments of morose beauty (‘Sorrow’, ‘Conversation 16’) but how can the result be any different when they blithely chuck out lines such as ‘you and your sister live in a lemonworld; do do do’. Just don’t don’t don’t.