The National are everywhere these days: Rolling Stone, Village Voice, NY Times…  I remember talking to the drummer in 2007  just before the release of Boxer about whether they were concerned about over-estimating their popularity by debuting the tour with five shows at Bowery Ballroom.  Clearly, they were not.  All five shows sold out and these days they are commanding much larger audiences at larger venues.  See TSOI post from one of those shows in 2007.

Before the recent release of High Violet, The National did something, I thought, was unexpected.  They had the NY Times stream the whole album on the NYTimes website.  It turns out that the band was being covered by a Times reporter during the making of High Violet and when the album was leaked about the time that the article was set to be published, The National tossed the idea to the Times to stream the album.  The Times, not known for being a venue to get a music related scoop gained some major cool cred. and the band got some additional exposure by ‘leaking’ the album on their own terms.

This is a recording from their recent show at Radio City.  The National ended the 4 song encore with, “Terrible Love”, the first song off of the new album.

Set list:

1. Mistaken for Strangers
2. Anyone’s Ghost
3. Bloodbuzz Ohio
4. Brainy
5. Secret Meeting
6. Slow Show
7. Squalor Victoria
8. Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks (with St. Vincent)
9. Afraid of Everyone (with Sufjan Stevens)
10. Little Faith
11. Available
12. Conversation 16
13. Apartment Story
14. Abel
15. Daughters Of The Soho Riots
16. England
17. Fake Empire
18. Encore:
18. Runaway
19. Lemonworld
20. Mr. November
21. Terrible Love

[audio: http://www.thesoundofindie.com/archive/2010/20100701/TheNational-TerribleLove.mp3|titles=Terrible Love (Live)|artists=The National]

Download: The National – Terrible Love (Live)

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