Album Review: Various Artists - Dark Was the Night

Various Artists
Dark Was the Night
4AD, 2009

I can count on a couple hands the artists on this collaboration that, despite their superior song-making abilities to my own, I have either sarcastically or outwardly lambasted in one form or another over the years. To them I apologize and say you are praiseworthy when presented in small doses. Nothing worth nitpicking here. The National’s Dessner brothers grabbed some of the biggest names this side of the P’fork Fest and collected two discs worth of material we (mostly) hadn’t heard to this point, all in the name of AIDS research. Good on ya for some of the collabs, like a real-life Books sighting - performing with José González - and the much-improved, Gillian Welch-infused “Lua” now listed under the Oberst name. Each of Justin Vernon’s contributions blows away anything on Blood Bank, while Beirut and the Decemberists hopefully give a preview of what to expect on their respective next albums. And there's crazy cousin Sufjan, covering a labelmate and going Gershwin for part of a 10+ minute opus. It’s well sequenced, for a good cause, and it’s better than any blog podcast you’ll find (save this site’s always slick playlist, with which we are hoping to cure the sniffles).

[Michael Ziman]