The National

Formed in 1999, The National have established themselves as mainstays of arenas and festivals with sold-out performances and headlining slots around the world. The band has scored five top 10 albums on The Billboard 200, multiple Grammy nominations with 2017’s Sleep Well Beast earning the award for Best Alternative Album. The National dropped not one but two new albums in 2023. First Two Pages of Frankenstein was released in April, followed by a surprise album Laugh Track in September, both on 4AD. Across two albums worth of new material they were joined by Phoebe Bridgers, Taylor Swift, Roseanne Cash, Bon Iver and Sufjian Stevens. 2023 was their best live year yet, selling out shows in North America and Europe, including Madison Square Garden, LA’s Greek Theatre and Alexandra Palace in London. Named one of their “Best Albums of 2023”, Rolling Stone called First Two Pages of Frankenstein ”…a remarkable reassertion of their potency and shared commitment…Nine albums deep, the National found new energy by conjuring not just a great, suffocating fog but also the far light that guides the way out.” They were also named Forbes’s “Band of the Year”, with the article stating, “All The National did in 2023 was release two superb albums … have a brilliant sold-out tour, deliver the festival set of the year with their riveting performance at BottleRock and collaborated with the likes of Phoebe Bridgers, Swift and Sufjan Stevens. The National are so consistently great it becomes easy to take for granted they will be at the top of their game. But even by their lofty standards this was an incredible year.” And The New Yorker’s Amanda Petrusich named it as one of her favorites of the year, saying if you already like “what the National has been doing for the past two-plus decades – making brooding, fraught, atmospheric rock and roll, marked by careful, resonant production and a ribbon of debauched humor—you are likely to also savor First Two Pages of Frankenstein, a heady encapsulation of the band’s entire gestalt.”

War On Drugs

The War on Drugs have steadily emerged as one of this century’s great rock and roll synthesists, removing the gaps between the underground and the mainstream, between the obtuse and the anthemic, making records that wrestle a fractured past into a unified and engrossing present. Led by Adam Granduciel, The New Yorker called them “the best American ‘rock’ band of this decade” in support of their album, A Deeper Understanding, for which they won the 2018 Grammy for Best Rock Album and were nominated for a BRIT Award for International Group of the Year. 2020 saw the release of LIVE DRUGS featuring live interpretations of songs throughout their career, including off their 2014 breakthrough, Lost In The Dream. Co-produced by Granduciel and Shawn Everett, their fifth studio album, I Don’t Live Here Anymore, “chips away some of their hazier edges in favor of sharper melodies, broadening the borders of the meticulous yet joyously simple sound [Granduciel] has perfected” (Pitchfork, Best New Music). It landed on numerous 2021 best albums of the year lists and garnered a second BRIT Award nomination. The band headlined Madison Square Garden in support of its release.

Lucius