Terrible Love and I'm Walking with Spiders

This week I've been reading up articles and interviews about The National in anticipation of High Violet, which comes out later this month but was, last week, streaming in its entirety on the New York Times page. First impression? Its' fantastic. Not the loose pop album the band set out to make at all, High Violet is darker, murkier, and far more unsettling than Boxer or Alligator.

The NYT article that goes with the stream is pretty good too, at least when providing a window into the...