4AD

In this age of firework careers, where media and blog-hype can see bands’ fortunes fluctuate before any product even hits the shelves, The National’s slow and steady rise to fame has been a refreshing counter to the norm. High Violet is the group's fifth, and most commercially successful, LP to date; its widespread popularity has consolidated the New Yorkers’ hard-earned success – the latest, and most pleasing, chapter in a career built on old-fashioned virtues of constant touring, critical acclaim and word-of-mouth. All of which sounds incredibly boring; and on the face of it The National certainly aren’t the world’s most exciting band. Their records are elegiac slow-burners, Matt Berninger’s voice paying its dues to Stuart Staples' (of labelmates Tindersticks) ‘club style’ warbling, and the lyrics detail a very middle-aged, and middle-class, set of conceits.

But oh, what details. And what songs. On ‘Anyone’s Ghost’, when Berninger sings “I had a hole in the middle where the lightning went through / I told my friends not to worry”, he brilliantly captures the murky don’t-ask-don’t-tell world of covered-up male emotions. Middle-class lives falling short of expectations and the feeling of being caught adrift are recurring themes, and they’re invariably depicted with a literary deftness – I was continually put in mind of Richard Ford’s ‘The Sportswriter’.  ‘Lemonworld’ is particularly wonderful, the lines “Takes me a day to remember a day / I didn’t mean to let it get out of hand” effortlessly conveying the sense of a man lost in the world. He has neither the will nor the desire to escape from his torpor, as the chorus attests: “You and your sister live in a lemonworld / I want to sit in and die”. No alarms and no surprises please.

Musically, The National are masters of their domain. What’s most pleasing is how they’ve succeeded in graduating to the higher echelons of the charts without blanding-out in any way. Here, they’re unafraid to begin proceedings with the rumbling, dirge-like guitars of ‘Terrible Love’ – think of R.E.M. opening Automatic… with ‘Drive’. High Violet is a record to sink into, and these tunes are built to last; hooks and choruses unfurl slowly rather than explode from the rooftops. There are some lovely touches: the jittery squiggles of guitar on the superb ‘Afraid of Everyone’ being a case in point. And much like The Walkmen (another well-travelled band of semi-veterans), these guys boast a rhythm section with the ability to add serious value.

It hardly needs saying that this is a band on a scorchingly hot run of form. I now make it four genuinely great records in a row, dating back to 2003’s Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers. That High Violet is not necessarily their best album is really saying something - the fact is you could quite easily put together strong arguments for any of their last four LPs being career-highs (Alligator probably still takes it by a nose for me). But here we have another superb addition to an exceptional catalogue. And there’s nothing boring at all about that.

Following six years of churning out album after album of ultra-lo-fi pop, delinquent California native Ariel Pink has landed himself a deal with 4AD. If you wanted to be very smart about this, you could almost say that he and his Haunted Graffiti have finally come out of The Doldrums (the title of Pink’s bedroom-recorded 2004 LP) and onto the front pages of broadsheet weekend supplements. The 32 year-old has unwittingly seen himself hailed as godfather of the nascent chillwave scene, and in the week running up to its release, a full stream of Before Today was premiered on The Guardian and L.A. Times websites – a level of publicity he could surely only have dreamt of even this time last year. So it’s a good job that his debut long-player for his new label is such a solid effort; what’s even better is that, while it doesn’t quite represent the commercialisation of his music that some may have feared, it is by some distance his most accessible release to date, and should see his music finally reach a wider audience.

Compared to his previous output, Before Today sounds like it’s actually had some money spent on the recording: the keyboards sound clean, some of the harmonies sound like they’ve been lifted from a Super Furry Animals LP, and slick saxophone solos pop up throughout proceedings, often when you least expect them. Such unpredictability is one of Here Today’s main strengths – even after several listens, you’re never quite sure in what direction any given song might be heading. Indeed, Pink’s lack of ‘proper’ musical training means that his songs have always sounded surprising; take the stand-out cut here, the glorious lead single ‘Round And Round’. The song – a reworking of an older track entitled ‘Frontman/Hold On (I’m Coming)’ – opens with a rolling funky bassline underpinning echo chamber vocals, before a typically weird middle eight gives way to a gorgeous, swelling chorus which sounds like it’s being sung by a thousand people. It’s the song to play to anyone who’s never heard of Pink and his gang, and it’s nothing short of stunning. Other highlights include the ‘70s soft rock of ‘Can’t Hear My Eyes’ and the somewhat MGMTesque ‘Butt-House Blondies’.

Like his chums and former labelmates Animal Collective, Ariel Pink has managed to retain his own distinct sound while changing his approach to making music so it can reach a wider audience. With Before Today, he has become a Todd Rundgren for the Facebook generation - and the great thing is you get the feeling the best has yet to come.