Note: Recent months have been very busy, so this album digest combines a review of the new album by The National with a couple of reviews left over from earlier in the year. I’ve written a few more album reviews in the past months but I’m so far behind (February and March have already been published on a considerable lag) that I’m just going to pepper forthcoming digests with additional reviews of older albums.

Lilacs & Champagne Danish & Blue You might remember that last year I reviewed the first Lilacs & Champagne album and I liked it a lot. This album sees them back with more of the same: taking the approach that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There are very few changes to the formula apart from the fact that the spoken word samples are not quite as good this time and there’s a bit more Grails-like guitar solo action.