Went to the "A Special Evening with The National" show in Toronto last night. It was..... something completely unexpected!
They did a showing of the short film companion piece to the album, then a Q&A with the creator of the film, Matt and Aaron (hosted by Leslie Feist!). Then they played the full new album start to finish, and ended with 4 classics (The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness, Bloodbuzz Ohio, Fake Empire and About Today).
The film was VERY art-house-esoteric, but also fascinating and heartbreaking. Some serious hipster pretention going on, but it worked? I think? The Q&A was just weird, and showed me that (some) fans of The National are just as nuts as the DMB fAmiLy crazies...
The new album seems much more of a collaboration with outside artists than previous ones, and definitely a further drift away from their post-punk roots. The music is still very complex and wonderful, but there are a lot of female vocals, and I'm not sure how I feel about that, but then I've never been a fan of the "male-female duet" type song.
Absolutely LOVE "Light Years." From what I can remember of the new album, "Where Is Her Head" was INCREDIBLE, and "Oblivions" was very cool. Looking forward to the album release!