National

BOXER
$14.98
This is by far my favorite album. It literally made me fall in love with music. I do recommend buying it from iTunes though, because they offer two bonus songs, "Blank Slate" and "Santa Clara" which are very good.

Boxer
$8.99
This is by far my favorite album. It literally made me fall in love with music. I do recommend buying it from iTunes though, because they offer two bonus songs, "Blank Slate" and "Santa Clara" which are very good.

Boxer
$9.98
This is by far my favorite album. It literally made me fall in love with music. I do recommend buying it from iTunes though, because they offer two bonus songs, "Blank Slate" and "Santa Clara" which are very good.

Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers
$13.98
The National's second CD shows a band in development. Short of the peak achieved in Alligator and Boxer (with still higher peaks to come, I hope), Songs still gives lots of value. The best cuts -- Murder Me Rachel and the final four songs -- pull all the band's strengths together, voice, lyrics, focused and direct instrumentation in both the raucous (Rachel) and introspective (Lucky You) moods that the band inhabits. Hurt humor also abounds (Trophy Wives). The two big drawbacks here: many of the songs just sort of amble off, with a last minute or so of not so interesting instrumentation. Trophy Wives has this problem. Compare it to the next cut, Fashion Coat, where conciseness at just over two minutes increases its power. The National also hadn't yet fully learned in Sad how to use drums to drive its lyric passion and desperation. By Alligator (think Abel and Lit Up), they had, big time.

One last thought -- Lucky You, with its sneaky and scary irony and obsession, was a first listen sleeper that by the next few times I'd been through the CD sounded like the best thing on it.