The National: High Violet (2011)

"It's a terrible love / That I'm walking with spiders," begins the first line of this album. You can kvetch all you want about this kind of melodrama, but I don't have to try too hard to imagine Dylan singing the same words. Besides, like My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, released six months later, this album is all about the melodrama. The images here, many of which come straight out of the Old Testament, are almost apocalyptic: oceans, floods, spiders, zombies, oceans and floods again, swarms of bees, "Manhattan valleys of the dead." The exaggerated grandiosity of the like is such that I'm finally convinced that Berninger has a sense of humor about his problems. The songs here are also far more universal than anything they've written, except possibly "Fake Empire." As a grad student, I love "I still owe money to the money to the money I owe." Most often, it's the simple quips that hit the hardest: "I don't wanna get over you," "Little voices swallowing my soul soul soul," lines which don't receive their profundity until Berninger's repeated them ad infinitum, turning them into whatever the pomo Brooklynite equivalent of a mantra is, which is probably still mantra. It's so easy to charge bands with crimes of pomposity, in part because it's often true. But pomposity done right can be downright beautiful. This, folks, is pomposity done right.

9/10

Wolf Parade: Apologies to Queen Mary (2005)

Lèse majesté it is not. In fact, the only aspect that might render this supposed indie classic unpalatable to the genteel (who constitute their fan base, but nevermind) is their trade-off vocals, which has been done better by countless alternative acts. I can't accuse them of laziness, but they're certainly inconsistent, if not haphazard. As far as innovation is concerned, this is straight up alternative-rock, only more childish. On "You Are a Runner and I Am My Father's Son” and “Shine a Light," though, this puerility pays off. The rest you can skip. 4/10

Hercules and Love Affair (2008)

"Blind" is better than anything Anthony & the Johnsons ever did, if that means anything to you (which it shouldn't), but the rest is the usual 80's fetishism so predominant in hipper circles.

4/10