THE NATIONAL Mon 11/27 Arlene Schnitzer GRAHAM MACINDOE
I haven’t always loved the National. Initially, their music struck me as deeply unnecessary, a pleasant but forgettable soundtrack for Subaru showrooms and Baby-Björn sojourns. But I didn’t hate them—it’s very hard to hate the National.
How do you summon antipathy for something so benign and familiar? My first impression, which might match yours: These are dudes who sit in coffee shops scribbling piquant quips into Moleskine notebooks when they aren’t reading the later works of John Cheever. I thought they seemed like callow youths trying on suits that still wouldn’t fit for a few years—nerdy guys desperate to ascend to a perch of coolness from which they might drop devastating pith onto the beautiful people who used to ignore them.