The National Gallery

My regular readers will be relieved to know that, despite the catchy, artsy headline, this post doesn't have anything to do with paintings.

Nope, I'm just posting a mini gallery to recap a magnificent performance by The National last Saturday at the Wiltern in Los Angeles. The guys played almost all of the songs I wanted to hear - only exception was my favorite National tune, Gospel - and sounded great doing it. Plenty of energy, and plenty of volume, too, which was cool because several of their songs are essentially loud ballads, so I was wondering how they'd sound in concert.

We were seated in the balcony, which on this night was only a problem because there was no discernible air conditioning and it was about 200 degrees. But despite the heat and the high perch, I managed to take a handful of pictures that I thought were not too terrible.


(To answer the snarky question that my sister will probably ask: No, I didn't take this one from the balcony.)


(Just setting the scene for you. Drink in the atmosphere, people.)








And, for those of you who prefer hearing music to looking at still photos of it, here are vids of two numbers from the show. They're a little dark - bordering on pitch black - for long stretches (I'm doing the best I can with my seven-year-old Sony camera!), but the sound is pretty good.

First, Fake Empire:


And here's Start a War:

Dates for the next few shows are listed here if you want to hear for yourself.