At the apex ....

No doubt: The National, the new REM Just cuddly and mawkish to land the voice of Matt Berninger, as great a risk at the latest when the next or the next album in the endless self-repeating. "Bloodbuzz Ohio" should be considered "Loosing My Religion" of the US band apply, who on their fifth album found for "Boxer" a soulful sound for a broad audience. The comparison limps a little, but actually to "High Violet" feels a bit like after "Out of Time", the largest and most successful "bridge Album" by REM, who led the band away from the students tape and toward Stadionact. What a record does not automatically bad - "Out of Time" is perhaps the last good album from Stipes and Co. And even "High Violet" is an excellent work, less introverted than the previous album, epic, melodic, less subcutaneous, more filmed in CinemaScope. A plate of grand gestures and the rock'n'roll stereotypes, big cinema with numerous guest musicians. For an almost orchestral feel worried or for chamber music Nuances

Formally, the plate is a kind of masterpiece of the band, spotless self-contained Americana numbers, always rescued by Bryce Dess former singing, breathing, complex drum work from boredom, adorned by Bern Ingers deeper sub-the-skin-voice, always just casual enough in order not to perish in the Schmerzenspose to Bono Cartoon to be laconic, cooler. "High Violet" shows a band at the height of her work, which exhausted their own resources to the limit, has driven to the apex of indie and mainstream and just goes on this wafer-thin ice, these few seconds is where widescreen rock just goes without being embarrassed. That can only succeed for an album, and this is this album. Bern Ingers gloomy, often cryptic texts form the counterpart to the National-typical music between epic and quiet little room, everything, absolutely everything remains within the Lot, deepened the typical National sound without ever becoming really boring (which quite a trick In view of the very narrow horizon of the band), everything looks even more credible and pure enough, but on the other hand sanded, matured, skillfully, confidently. After such an album must be very lucky still hope for a plant with a similar balance, then grab either self-destructive effects ("Let's Do Something Completely Different"), which usually can be quite exciting yet, or the inevitable solo album of the singer - or at worst, a band in the eternal feedback loop. As just REM, stoically repeatedly publish the almost admirable decade the same album, and no one seems to bother at all. May the National Brothers this Hell's spared.