it takes an ocean not to break
a look back at the national's 2010 breakthrough high violet
ten years ago i graduated college with a degree i would never use (telecommunications and news reporting lmao) and moved back to my parent's home in wisconsin with zero job prospects, a confusing uncertain future, and a lot of desperation and anxiety (picked up a job working third shift at a grocery store - i lasted two weeks). basically a week after settling in, the national dropped their fifth album high violet. tracks from alligator and boxer were weekly staples back on the college radio show i hosted so naturally i was anticipating this new national album and was expecting more songs in the vein of boxer. i remember downloading a shitty leak of the record the month prior but only played it here and there amongst all the distraction and commotion of graduating. fast forward to a best buy trip on may 11th (i think i was buying a new charger for my macbook): casually strolling past the new release section high violet's vibrant cover caught my eye and immediately grabbed it (that and the $7.99 price tag - i probably only had 120 bucks in my bank account - most of it going towards that charger). the thirty minute ride home was a transcendent one. tracks like terrible love, anyone's ghost, sorrow, and bloodbuzz ohio filled up the cabin of my 2010 ford taurus. i was transfixed - this was boxer but bigger, more grandiose, dripping with ambition. a band going for broke trying to reach tier above "critical indie darling" while maintaining a lot of their weird intricacies but elevating it to new anthemic levels. i got home and stayed in my car for the next hour devouring every second of this record - swept away in the apocalyptic nature of matt berninger's lyrics - walking with spiders on terrible love, the anxiety of afraid of everyone, the swarm of bees that highlight album centerpiece bloodbuzz ohio, being led to the flood in runaway, eating brains in conversation 16, or the eerily relevant lemonworld - all soundtracked by aaron and bryce dessner’s majestic and intricate guitar work with scott and bryan devendorf providing the relentless rhythmic backbone.
ultimately the national broke through with high violet - selling 51k copies during its first week and debuting at number 3 on the charts, bloodbuzz ohio and terrible love became top-tier staples in the band's discography, a bunch of these tracks were featured on dramas like gossip girl and grey's anatomy (two of my all time favorite shows), and played sorrow 105 times in a row (or six hours long) at an art installation in new york. They graduated from playing small venues to selling out large amphitheaters and arenas, as well as throwing their own festivals (homecoming in cincinnati and the justin vernon-collaborative eaux claires festival - my wife and I attended the first one and I died watching the national duet with sufjan stevens and vernon in a night one closing a cappella rendition of vanderlyle crybaby geeks).
it's easy to see that high violet is the album that turned the national into THEE NATIONAL - the band we all love and adore today has gone on to greater and grander things in the ten years since high violet. they've released three more great albums, becoming one of the most beloved and biggest rock bands in the world in the process while each member having the time to explore other projects (serpentine prison, el vy, lnzndrf, pfarmers, composing scores, producing records for sharon van etten, local natives, frightened rabbits, etc). But high violet will always the one for me, resonating and impacting my life when I needed it most - i found a lot of solace and sanity with high violet - the desperation and tension displayed throughout the record mirrored what i was feeling every day. the idea of the band making these arena-filling tracks but still keeping them kind of shitty sounding (watch the march 2010 fallon performance of terrible love and then listen to the studio version - you hear it immediately) reflected those same emotions in me. i was striving to do big things with my life but either the expectations and the fear of failure locked me into these self-destructive tendencies - the rejection won't hurt that bad if you sabotage yourself first. the songs throughout high violet trumped over that mindset however and the more these songs became ingrained in my life the more I believed i could do the same. i'm sure i'm not the only person in their mid-thirties who feels this way about high violet either, which is why the record resonated (and still resonates) with so many people today. it's why songs like bloodbuzz ohio and terrible love and england are the loudest, most enthusiastic moments during a national live show - we lived and died with these moments a decade ago and we’re still living and dying with them today.
man, it's all been forgiven swans are a-swimmin' i'll explain everything to the geeks
the national will release a special ten-year expanded edition of high violet on June 19th - pre-order the vinyl before it’s gone and then spend an hour today re-living the record.