The National's seventh album arrived like a marriage counselling session set to synths and guilt, Matt Berninger's baritone navigating domestic wreckage with the weary precision of someone who knows exactly where all the bodies are buried. The Dessner brothers pushed beyond their indie rock comfort zone, threading drum machines and electronic textures through songs about middle-aged reckoning and political dread.

It earned them a Grammy and proved that anxiety, when crafted this meticulously, sounds like beautiful devastation. The system dreams, but nobody's sleeping well.