When, on my first couple of listens to High Violet, it felt a bit monochrome, featureless - monotonous even - I was unfazed, because, you see, the thing with National albums is that they're growers. Alligator and Boxer are both remarkable records, both flat-out great, and, it turns out, High Violet deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as those predecessors - it has the same hypnotic quality, the same surging musicality, the same silvery velvet deepness.
The songs on High Violet are basically bulletproof, carefully constructed and lit from within, and decorated with subtle details. Like Boxer, it feels as if it's made up of a series of suites, the scene-setting, exploratory, increasingly definite building blocks of "Terrible Love", "Sorrow" and "Anyone's Ghost" leading into the "Little Faith" - "Afraid of Everyone" - "Bloodbuzz Ohio" run which, for me, forms the solid centre of the album; then the gathering of thoughts (and, to be honest, weakest cut) that is "Lemonworld" before the closing run, "Runaway", "Conversation 16" and "England" repeatedly building and subsiding and building again until finally flowing over on melancholically triumphant finale "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks". There's a natural flow to it - a sustainedly brooding mood, shot through with well-timed crescendos and rushes of energy. I listen to it over and over; it continues to startle me; sometimes I think, all albums should be this good.
