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The National are a New York-based quintet that debuted with
The National (2001), an album recorded before playing a single live show
and highlighted by Matt Berninger's smoky vocals and allegorical tales
(Beautiful Head, Cold Girl Fever,
Theory of the Crows, American Mary).
In an apparent outrage to the alt-country tradition,
the twin guitars of twin brothers
Bryce Dressner and Aaron Dressner often take a back seat to the dark, ominous crooning (via Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave) and to the flexible but ever majestic
rhythm section.
The expressive power of band and songwriter truly blossomed on
Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers (Brassland, 2003),
a soap opera of ordinary misfits that employed a more expansive sound.
The best songs
belonged to a new genre of
chamber country-pop, tinged with
Lou Reed-ian expressionism and
Leonard Cohen-ian existentialism.
That combination packed an emotional force that, coupled with the singer's
almost gothic delivery, could also propel rocking
Warren Zevon-ian songs such as
Slipping Husband, that culminates in a visceral scream, or such as
Murder Me Rachael, a lullaby drenched in a crescendo of distorted guitar and thundering drums,
or such as Available a ringing, insistent boogie with a rousing, psychotic finale.
Furthermore, these lively elegies were often supported by a broad palette of impressionistic touches,
ranging from the electronic undercurrent and the subaquatic organ of Patterns of Fairytales to
the plaintive violin of 90-Mile Water Wall
to the jangling guitars the sinister jamming of Trophy Wife (sounding like an update of the Archies' Sugar Sugar).
The textural work was even more evident in the languid, whispered
Cardinal Song (for small country-gospel ensemble), a masterful ghost of a
song that seems to die but instead revives itself for the final lines in the
form of a solemn neoclassical coda,
and in the closing Lucky You, stately jamming of guitar and piano punctuated with mournful strings.
Perhaps a bit less cohesive and less traumatic,
third album Alligator (Beggars Banquet, 2005) repeats the same show
through Baby We'll Be Fine, Karen and Abel.
While no song stood out, the proceedings as a whole emanated a sense of
sobering and profound humanity, perhaps best represented by
Daughters of the Soho Riots.
Boxer (Beggars Banquet, 2007) delivered twelve immaculate productions
that summed up the band's aesthetic, in particular the way songs rapidly
assume a solemn quality while continuing to communicate at a bare everyman
level.
The layered arrangement of Fake Empire, rolling piano followed by
skipping syncopated rhythm followed by sobbing trumpets followed by marching trombones,
or the torrential drums and mournful strings that torment the dejected mantra of Squalor Victoria,
or the crescendo of drums and guitar that swallows the vocals in Guest Room
or the funereal bassoon and bucolic pace of Gospel
are more important than the story itself. While the vocals often sound
vulnerable, the music has never sounded so strong.
The band's narrative style excels at the shadowy mood of
Brainy, Green Gloves and Racing Like A Pro, but
Berninger sounds most comfortable in
the tender epic tone of Slow Show, with strings and noises competing
to break the steady beat. One of the most monotonous vocalists to ever deal with
profound themes, he truly modulates his singing only once, in
Ada, and sends shockwaves to a tapestry of horns, keyboards and guitars.
Even the more muscular moments
(Apartment Story, Mistaken For Strangers) are first and foremost
a game of balance between an almost metaphysical yearning and a very
earthly poignancy (best epitomized by the insistent drumming).
The atmosphere owes a lot to producer Padma Newsom and to the rhythm section
(notably drummer Bryan Devendorf).
High Violet (4AD, 2010) is more extroverted and at times even emphatic
than its predecessors while sticking to an adult midtempo and indulging in
a spleen that recalls the gloomy post-punk melodies of the 1980s.
Terrible Love is emblematic: moderately psychedelic, moderately dark-punk and moderately post-rock.
In most cases the music is tenuous, a modest decoration for the voice.
The stately narration of songs like Sorrow wanders in a soundscape that is made almost exclusively of drumming until the very end.
Hence, the vocals are in charge of most of the movement.
In what is possibly the most subtle strategy of the album, the dejected refrain of Anyone's Ghost collides with the Doors-ian melody that created it.
The singing in Bloodbuzz Ohio is so detached to sound lugubrious despite
the strong rhythmic pulsation of drums and bass and the rich timbres of the tinkling piano.
When the arrangements weigh more, the results are mixed.
The oneiric blend of strings, accordion and backup vocals in Afraid Of Everyone does improve the effect of the brooding U2-esque elegy;
and the subdued horn fanfare does provide a welcome lift to the otherwise monotonous singsong of Runaway;
whereas the orchestral crescendo feels vain in Little Faith, and
all the bombastic commotion on Conversation 16 feels like a distraction
from the fact that the song is quite trivial.
England is all inner introspection and call and response with the
instruments; again, with mixed results.
The biggest problem of the album is obviously not technical (the musicians'
proficiency is spectacular) but tactical: they make too much of the lyrics,
which, as customary with rock bands, are not exactly Nobel Prize-grade.
When the music is so subservient to the text, one has to make sure to have
something important to say, and to word it in a memorable manner.
Not many rock musicians rise to the occasion.
The melodies and the arrangements are average at best, no matter how skilled
the performers.
Trouble Will Find Me (4AD, 2013) opens with a
languid, hypnotic slumber of repetition,
I Should Live in Salt: that is a fitting metaphor for the rest of
the album. There are a couple of imitations
(the dark stately Leonard Cohen-ian Demons, the
bouncy Bruce Springsteen-ian Don't Swallow the Cap)
and one facile pseudo-anthem (Sea of Love), and the
quietly melodious Pink Rabbits; but mostly the album is simply one
long repetition. The band
finally injects some life into the feverish gospel-ish hymn Graceless,
but it is too little too late.
Sleep Well Beast (4AD, 2017) was an album of renovation.
There are songs arranged with electronic keyboards such as
I'll Still Destroy You, that sounds like Caribbean synth-pop.
Glitch electronics and syncopated beats litter the dark ballad Guilty Party.
There are rocking songs like the vibrant Day I Die and the
Sixties-style ditty The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness,
both outdone by the garage grunge of Turtleneck.
There's a piano-based serenade (Carin at the Liquor Store),
there's an atmospheric ballad full of sound effects (Nobody Else Will Be There),
there's even languid lounge-pop (Dark Side of the Gym).
But mostly this is music of an average mediocrity that lacks the imagination
to soar.
The desolate, murmured, nuanced, six-minute Walk It Back is the band's new take on Leonard Cohen's art, and there's little else to remember.
Matt Berninger formed EL VY with
Menomena's Brent Knopf that debuted
with Return to the Moon (2015).
Aaron Dessner
and Bon Iver's Justin Vernon
launched the project Big Red Machine with the album
Big Red Machine (2018).
The National's
I am Easy to Find (4AD, 2019)
veers from past practice mainly because it surrounds
Berninger with female singers:
Gail Ann Dorsey,
Lisa Hannigan, Mina Tindle
(aka Pauline de Lassus Saint-Genies),
Kate Stables, Sharon Van Etten.
It also features more than 70 musicians (including 13 violinists), but
the sound is rarely maximalist.
And it also came with a 26-minute film directed by Mike Mills and starring Alicia Vikander.
Particularly welcome are Dorsey's vocals in
You Had Your Soul With You, Roman Holiday and Hey Rosey,
as well as
Lisa Hannigan's in The Pull of You and
French singer Mina Tindle (also Bryce Dessner's wife) in Oblivions
(possibly the album's standout, a fast-paced country-rock elegy).
The Brooklyn Youth Chorus replaces all of them in Dust Swirls in Strange Light.
The complex orchestration of I am Easy to Find,
the strings apotheosis of Light Years,
and the bombastic Where Is Her Head are the result of
having too many instruments around.
The seven-minute Not in Kansas does not fare as well as the
simpler material (notably Oblivions).
The album contains 16 songs for a total of 64 minutes: at least eight of them
are forgettable.
The National scored
Rebecca Miller's film She Came to Me (2023).
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