Thomas Conner
  • thomasconner
    • Bio
    • Professional: Resumé
    • Academic: CV
    • Teaching
    • Blog

Phenomonoscopy

musical moments: the national

2/21/2014

0 Comments

 
As a critic, I had to write about the National — report them, box them, sum them up. I once described them — in indelible ink, I’m sorry to say — as “sounding like U2 on a bender.” Deadlines, you reach for that stuff, you don’t look back. Free of the assignments now, I’m enjoying actually getting to know this band like a real human being. One day this week, an appointment canceled and I spent an hour wandering campus, a flaneur in earbuds, listening without note-taking, loving. With American Music Club largely a gone concern, the National fills its borders and makes peace with pathos. But such muted, mumbled passion — this newest album, Trouble Will Find Me, is a symphony of restraint, an odyssey on a wine-darkening sea swirling with pre-panic and forecast regret. Every pulled punch lands squarely, every urgent squall falls apart sweetly. Matt Berninger, a low baritone in a high-tenor world, shuffles in slippered feet through Mark Eitzel’s broken-glass wake, dotes over his songs, poking at them with his sheepish staccato, with a band upholstering its sound in cushy tones and alluring pats (does Bryan Devendorf even have any cymbals?). Viscous and visceral, a joy to imbibe.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    this blahg

    I'm THOMAS CONNER, communication researcher and culture journalist.

    I study the cultural histories and media effects of holograms, AR tech, and virtual performance, usually in their relationship to how humans negotiate mortality. I was a pop music critic for 20 years.
    I'm a Taoist and a teaist. All of this and more is fair game here.


    &c. &c. &c.


    Archives

    November 2020
    July 2019
    May 2019
    January 2019
    May 2018
    February 2018
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013

    Categories

    All
    Academia
    Books
    California
    Communication
    Conferences
    Hatsune Miku
    Movies
    Music: Background
    Music: Foreground
    Obits
    Oklahoma
    Science Studies
    Technology
    Television
    Theory: Comm
    Virtual Performance
    Woody Guthrie

    RSS Feed

Home

Bio

Professional

Academic

Blog

mine, all mine © 2000-2019
  • thomasconner
    • Bio
    • Professional: Resumé
    • Academic: CV
    • Teaching
    • Blog