The National teased their upcoming May 11 album High Violet with an appearance on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" last night, performing the "Terrible Love," another lovely, wound-licking track that announces early its intentions of building to something grander, yet blindsides you anyway with the sheer force of its climax.
So many of Matt Berninger's songs are about doing the wrong thing because it's easy or comfortable. "Terrible Love" begins the same way, but there's a twist: At the halfway mark he declares his intentions to resist these destructive temptations. "I won't follow you," he announces, and to perhaps even his own surprise, he follows through, triumphing over inertia as the song builds to its fervid conclusion. Some crucial lyrics are difficult to decipher, so it's tough to tell whether Berninger is singing about kicking a woman or a drugor whether he makes any distinction, since he often equates alcohol with the fairer genderbut either way, this is one of The National's most striking songs yet, another new height for the band.
The video is embedded below; it's worth sitting through the Dove body wash commercial for.
