I couldn’t come up in this place and pretend to be mrjoeqmusicfan without saying true to the music that I’m listening to right now. Despite my recent posts, I do listen to music without the “alt” prefix (well only if you don’t consider alt.indie to be a true genre).

The National has been creating quite a buzz on the net for a couple of years now. Like most hip things, I got on the bandwagon a little late. About a year and a half ago, I cam across a strange little tune called “Secret Meeting”. I loaded it onto my mp3 player, gave it a casual listen, and left it sitting for months. Admittedly, I am pretty much a “indie virgin”, which means that I haven’t been exposed to much music in the last five years that isn’t played on the radio. When I gave it a closer listen, this song totally blew me away. Who the hell sings about a covert rendezvous in the basement of their brain? Rivers full of lost sharks? Disappearing in a room? This song totally captured my imagination for the next few weeks as I imagined stories of super spies meeting via brainmail and other cool geeky stuff.

For whatever reason, it took me a few weeks to look up more stuff by this band. I found more great imaginitive, innovative, totally original songs with quirky titles like “Murder Me Rachel”, “Waterwall”, “Slipping Husband”. This band also rocked it out with songs like “Mr. November” and “Abel”.

I could throw out a whole page of adjectives to describe this band, but who wants to read that crap? Let’s just get straight to what you came here for, the music. And don’t forget to go to your favorite media outlet and buy The National’s latest album, Boxer

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So if you’ve never heard The National, where do you start? If you are sick and tired of seeing The National on blogs, what have you not heard already? How about a few live tracks…

The National - Live on KEXP - Start A War

The National - Live on KEXP - Slow Show

The National - Live on KEXP - Brainy

The National - Live on KEXP - Apartment Story

A Sampling of The National - Black Sessions - 2005-04-29

The National, Black Session, 2005-04-29 - All The Wine

The National, Black Session, 2005-04-29 - Secret Meeting

The National, Black Session, 2005-04-29 - Driver Surprise Me

The National, Black Session, 2005-04-29 - Mr November

The National, Black Session, 2005-04-29 - Abel

The complete Black Sessions in zip format

and also Here