Nationalized

The National are on tour now, promoting a new (not-yet-released) album and if you get a chance, go see them. Me and some fellow lurkers caught them at 9:30 Club last night and they were badass, mang.

Added bonus is that they're from the Cincinnasty motherland, but (like me and so many others) had the good sense to get the hell outta there.

They're playing like 19 shows in DC, and last night's was the first of a double-header, but they weren't pacing themselves at all. Played a solid 90 minutes to a packed house and sounded really, really good. It's always a bonus when you get to see one of your favorite bands AND they sound great live. They deviated from the studio versions of songs some, but not so much that the show veered off into "MTV UnPlugged" action.

I wish I could have caught the 2nd show, even though it was likely to be a bunch of promo songs off the new album. They played a few songs from the new one in the first show, and one of the songs was really good...the other two, not so much. Whatevs. Good ish for sure.