second album released

The National’s second album, Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers , released in 2003, was the band’s first collaboration with record producers Paul Heck and Peter Katis , who would later also produce the band’s albums Alligator and Boxer . After the French release of the album on the French label Talitres , DJ Bernard Lenoir invited them to perform on his Black Sessions twice on France Inter . Publications such as Uncut and the Chicago Tribune named it the album of the year. In 2004, they released the Cherry Tree EP. The EP featured “All the Wine”, a song that would appear on their next record. The release of the EP garnered further success and landed them on a successful tour with The Walkmen . In the same year, the band quit their day jobs and signed to a new label, Beggars Banquet Records , because the process of running their own label was becoming “too complicated”.