Are the National the most important American alternative group of their generation? Perhaps, though it would be as much from their members’ activities outside the parent band as because of their own music. Bryce and Aaron Dessner, the twin brothers who play guitar and write the music, have become central collaborators and curators to a whole swathe of American music, running festivals and writing and producing with everyone from Kronos Quartet to Taylor Swift. Evidently, their creative needs cannot be contained within a rock band.
It’s not hard to hear why they are so sought after. For all that at one level, the National are an absolutely conventional alt-rock band – a bit broody, a bit euphoric, a bit anxious, a bit triumphant, a bit quiet, a bit loud – there’s something gauzy and unpindownable about them. It is not meant as a slight to say they are Coldplay for those who fancy themselves cool – they, too, communicate emotion as much through sound as words, building moods and offering moments of release when lowering verses erupt into soaring choruses.
