Show Review: The National at Fox Oakland, 5/26/10

The National's Mike Berninger.

High Violet, the fifth full-length album from Cincinnati-bred, Brooklyn-based band The National, has defied the Law of Diminishing Returns for me: each and every subsequent listen of an individual track increases my level of aural pleasure not to mention obsession with dissecting every lyric, note, and hidden meaning behind the combination of both.

Lead singer Mike Berninger has flat out admitted to the fact that he’s incapable of scribing a song that isn’t melancholy in nature. Yet, there’s something beautifully uplifting in the tortured tales interwoven into the band’s signature blend of Americana, Britpop, and slight twinge of country-rock. Continue reading “Show Review: The National at Fox Oakland, 5/26/10”