THE NATIONAL 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: Laugh Track is The National's most freewheeling, all-hands-on-deck album in years. If Frankenstein represented a rebuilding of trust between group members after 20+ years together, the vibrant, exploratory Laugh Track is both the product of that faith and a new statement of intent. Revelling in the license to radically upend its creative process, The National honed most of this material in live performances on tour this year and captured those invigorated versions in impromptu sessions at producer Tucker Martine's Portland studio, Flora Recording & Playback. The nearly eight-minute album closer 'Smoke Detector' was recorded in June during a Vancouver soundcheck, completing a body of work bristling with spontaneity and vintage rock energy that makes a perfect complement to the songs found on its more introspective predecessor.

Review: Ohio five-piece The National present their latest, most affecting statement to date, Laugh Track. The 12-song LP is a follow-up companion to, and features material originally started in, the same sessions as First Two Pages Of Frankenstein, also released by 4AD back in April. While the parent album was a brooding genesis of post-COVID anxiety channelled into indie rock, this child is a higher-res re-rendering of the same headspace, lending the National clarity in hindsight. Like its predecessor, it features from the same ilk of collaborators - Phoebe Bridgers, Rosanne Cash, Bon Iver - and is an infectiously pristine indie-pop-rocker, dedicated to "bailing out of your head".