On the evening of Saturday, May 15, 2010 at around the hour of 8 o’clock, The National will perform High Violet in its entirety at a concert benefitting Red Hot, which is an organization dedicated to fighting AIDS by way of raising awareness through music. The concert is going to take place in Brooklyn, New York at Brooklyn’s Academy of Music. For those of you fortunate enough to have gotten tickets before they sold out (within milliseconds, I’m sure), we wish you a fantastic and beautiful evening! For the rest of you (myself included), worry not because – guess what? – the entire performance is going to be streaming, STREAMING, streaming, STREAMing LIVE on Youtube! So, cancel your plans (come on, it’s alright – you’ll live), eliminate all distraction from within 5,001 miles of you and tune in to what I am positively sure will be an amazing performance!
Whoa, but wait – there’s more! Can it really be a two part post? Is it even a post at all? This is all an illusion – isn’t it? NO! It’s not. Please continue scrolling. Thank you!
And here we have it, the official music video for the first single off of High Violet, Bloodbuzz Ohio! Damn. The simplicity of this video takes nothing away from its intimacy. Alone, in a world of black and white, Matt Berninger – with his blazer, shirt, tie and vest in tow- graces our screens with his intense, yet comforting presence and offhanded silly while at the same time charming dance moves. The intensity of his stare and the smooth baritone sound escaping his mouth, holds our focus like a vacuum. Whether on a stroll through the park, laying in the grass, feeding the ducks, – offering an image very reminiscent of old photographs of James Dean – or left on a bar stool, or even against the backdrop of a curtain as nothing but a man, with a glass of wine Berninger never seems to lose track of the debts that he owes and the haunting weight that plagues him while realizing that the land that raised him, was never really his home.
Personally, I adore this video. I see it as honest and simple, never losing sight of the reflective atmosphere of the song itself and the feelings that it garners. Plus, staring at Berninger, as if he is singing to me and only me, for 4 minutes and 36 seconds is definitely a plus – I definitely wouldn’t mind being stuck in a swarm of bees with him for a while. So, before I cross another line – I’d just like to end this post by saying: Well done, The National!
Oh, and this is not the end of our swooning, stay tuned for a review of High Violet (maybe) which was released this week, May 11th and is currently in stores EVERYWHERE! You really have no excuse but to go out there and pick it up!
pick apart the past 