Having spent the whole day listening to and reviewing albums by The National, it would seem like a horrible mistake if I couldn’t, just this once, bend the rules and include a non-album track in proceedings, when the track in question is this beautiful, this perfect. And it was written for a computer game, ferchrissakes! Admittedly, written for a computer game here is roughly analogous to written for a movie soundtrack - the game in question is the outstanding Portal 2, and the makers, Valve, made sure the song matched the mood of the part of the game in which it appears.

So there’s really everything to love and nothing to hate about the whole enterprise.

And you can include, if you like, the unexpected video for the track in your circle of love here, because it was selected by Valve as the winner of a make a video for this awesome song by The National competition. It features a sock-puppet, and landscape, and some walking, and really nothing at all about the game, or its environment. But you try not to be at least slightly amused by the site of an alarmed-looking sock-puppet peeking out over a parka-clad shoulder atop a windswept peak amidst another dramatic chorus from The National.