3. Trouble Will Find Me / The National

Trouble Will Find Me is a flawless collection of elegant rock songs.  With slow burns and gradual builds, private torches and communal liftoffs, the record is all devils and grace.  The thirteen tracks are cohesive and impeccably sequenced, an exquisite exercise in dour transcendence.  And the songwriting is so rich with melody and world-weary texture, it would almost be insufferable were it not so velvety.

If you are counting at home, The National have now recorded four excellent/classic albums in a row: the elliptical rock of Alligator, the masterful apartment stories of Boxer, the brooding grandeur of High Violet, and the private demon theater of Trouble Will Find Me.  Like the band's previous albums, this record is a musical grower, slowly revealing layer after layer of personal paralysis and heartache.  And seven months after its release, the record is still growing and taking shape and making a case as the band's very best to date.

To spare you from my overwrought praise, I will simply point you to my review of the band's superlative summer concert.  I cannot sum up the The National in 2013 any better.  But I will share with you some of my favorite lines from the record, which display Matt Berninger's wry empathy, caustic wit, and heartwrenching monologues.

• I should live in salt for leaving you behind.
• Every day I start so great and then the sunlight dims.  The less I look, the more I see the python's in the limbs.  I do not know what's wrong with me, the sour is in the cut.  When I walk into a room I do not light it up.
• And if you want to see me cry, play Let It Be or Nevermind.
• I see you rushing down.  Tell me how to reach you.  I see you rushing down.  What did Harvard teach you?
• I am in your arms.  I wish someone would take my place, can't face heaven all heavenfaced.
• Oh, when I lift you up you feel like a hundred times yourself.  I wish everybody knew what's so great about you.  Oh, but your love is such a swamp.  You don't think before you jump, and I said I wouldn't get sucked in.  This is the last time.
• Graceless.  I'm trying, but I'm gone.  Through the glass again, just come and find me.  God loves everybody, don't remind me.  I took the medicine and I went missing.  Just let me hear your voice.  Just let me listen.
• Grace.  Put the flowers you find in a vase.  If you're dead in the mind it will brighten the place.  Don't let them die on the vine, it's a waste.  Grace.
• I can't blame you for losing your mind for a little while, so did I.
• Tried to call you from the party, it's full of punks and cannonballers.
• All the L.A. women fall asleep while swimming.  I got paid to fish them out then one day I lost the job.
• You didn't see me I was falling apart.  I was a white girl in a crowd of white girls in the park.  You didn't see me I was falling apart.  I was a television version of a person with a broken heart.
• They can all just kiss off in the air.