New: The National – “Rylan” & “I Need My Girl”

Click on the turntable on the left to listen to a continuous stream of music featured on Pretty Much Amazing - updated every day. For more, you can check out the Best Songs of 2012.

Everyone and their dad’s favorite contemplative sad-rock Brooklyn band, the National, took to Q’s Toronto studios and delivered recordings of two brand new songs. The band are in top form here, even on material they’ve hardly played live before.

“Rylan” reminds us of songs like “Ada” from 2007’s Boxer – frontman Matt Berninger pleads, customarily inscrutably, with the song’s titular subject in his irresistible buttery baritone while simple, minor-key piano chords echo like an accompanist in a silent film showing in some cavernous gilded theater, slow-burning up into a classic National catharsis. “I Need My Girl” is another slow-burner, built around a looped, bubbly guitar riff. Check out both tracks.

Listen to “I Need My Girl” here.

by Genevieve Oliver on December 9, 2011 ‡ 70 reactions