I've been listening to the National's album High Violet a fair bit recently. I went looking for lyrics this morning and found this blog, which has YouTube videos and lyrics for all the songs on the album (and many more besides).

I don't have the vocabulary to talk about music, really, but I like the richness of the background against the peculiar spareness of the lyrics (which is hard to quote out of context but nevertheless lodges in my head—I mean, "I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees / I never married, but Ohio don't remember me"?). I particularly like "Sorrow," "Anyone's Ghost," "Bloodbuzz Ohio," "Lemonworld," and "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks," but the entire album actually works well as an album, which is unusual for me these days (my only two-star song is "Afraid Of Anyone"). [*] Honorable mention to "Runaway" for being used in this character study of Meldrick from Homicide ("What makes you think I'm enjoying being led to the flood? / We got another thing coming undone.").

[*] For instance, I tried listening to Josh Ritter's So Runs the World Away as an album (available from the artist in its entirety on YouTube), and as much as I like some of the songs on that, others make me lunge for the "skip" button. And I can't seem to muster up the attention for the Decemberists' The King Is Dead at one go, for all that I've rated half the songs on it at 3+ stars by now from when they've come up on shuffle.

If you like the songs from the blog, here are handy purchase links: album at Amazon or iTunes.