The Northern Review

There are only a handful of artists for which I buy their new albums sight unseen: Andrew Bird, The National, The New Pornographers, Jars of Clay and Sandi Patty.  (JK on the last one.)  But sometimes, for whatever reason I don’t get the new albums immediately upon release.

So, it was with great excitement that I bought High Violet (The National) and Together (The New Pornographers) this week via Amazon Music.

A little background: I stumbled upon TNP’s Twin Cinema a few years ago by accident. 

You see, radio in New York City is abysmal.  The local rock station only recently started playing “modern rock”, but intersperses it with healthy doses of Bon Jovi, Neil Young, The Rolling Stones, and Nirvana.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that—to each their own.  But I long for the day when New York has a station that’s as progressive as CFNY.  Note: I haven’t listened to CFNY regularly in 8 years, so if they’ve gone downhill, I am comparing with the CFNY of at least 8 years ago.

Back to Twin Cinema: I loved it.  It was the only disc in my CD player for weeks. I then started exploring TNP’s back catalogue as well as the solo work of AC Newman and Neko Case.  When Challengers came out, I bought without hesitation, but for some reason didn’t get into as deeply as I did with Twin Cinema.  Now, that I’ve given Together a chance, I might take TNP off my “auto-buy” list.  Actually, I’ll wait.  This is only strike two.

Am I being too rough?

By the way, I absolutely love the National Album, in case you were wondering.