Educate me about The National

drofluf

Iamnobody said:

Sad songs For Dirty Lovers often gets overlooked from their catalogue. I really don’t know why...it’s a brilliant album.

I think they are one of the best bands around at the moment - live and on record.

Good call. And don't forget their first eponymously named album. Different vibe from the later stuff and one of the songs is later reprised in Slow Show

Whitecat

Iamnobody said:

horse said:

The timing of the intro transition on Fake Empire is genius in my opinion. Also the chorus on Bloodbuzz has something really hypnotic about it for me.

I’m learning the piano part to Fake Empire with my 7 year old daughter. It’s got a tricky rhythm for her as the left hand’s doing 3 beats to the bar and the right 4.

She loves it...here’s a link to the YouTube lesson. Anyone could play this with practice.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lBnioErBc98

The exercises and nursery rhymes she does in her formal lessons are great but being able to play along with Daddy’s music really peaked her interest. 

I haven’t tried to play many National songs on guitar though. The parts often compliment the whole song rather than being something obvious to play stand alone. I feel the same way about the guitar on Nick Cave songs - two of my favourite bands but I hardly know a full song by either. 

So - recommendations on which National songs are rewarding to play on guitar?

For me The National's stuff is more about "play along with" rather than "play in isolation" for exactly the reasons you describe - the band is so much about arrangement - just like with NC&TBS... that guitar parts on their own barely register. My favourite noodle is probably 'Don't Swallow The Cap' - it switches between slide parts and regular picked stuff, but has distinctive enough phrases that you know what you're doing.

(Pro tip with Bad Seeds material - buy an Eastwood Warren Ellis Tenor model and then you can play a lot of recent stuff more "properly" - requires new thinking, hard to just pick up and do by ear but once you work out the basics you can do Higgs Boson Blues and Jubilee Street all the way through without too much effort.)

Back to The National, ATM I'm trying to learn 'England' on the piano all the way through. It's not too bad at all...

Creed_Clicks

Kid of lost a bit of interest after High Violet. Always felt that the drum beat is the same when I hear their later songs! But I'll give em another whirl. Really like Alligator, Boxer, etc.

Lebarque

Really good tips thanks, chaps. All the wine is the first track that stood out for me and a few others from Alligaror are great, but I'm really enjoying Boxer at the moment.

Lebarque

Agree with @redrighthand about the drummer. Amazing.

Whitecat

Good feature about them in the Guardian today - https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/may/03/the-national-were-the-sound-of-the-apocalypse