The National - Sleep Well Beast (Sept. 8th, 2017) Anticipation Thread

I adored their last couple of albums. I will be avoiding listening to any singles prior to the album's release, but I'll be bookmarking this thread...

is everyone going to release a new album this year?

in the mood for a new National album, so yeah looking forward to this.

This is about the only one from the usual suspects I'm excited for. Sorry, Arcade Fire, Phoenix, Fleet Foxes, LCD Soundsystem, Grizzly Bear, Lorde, Haim ... Actually, I take that back, I like how Grizzly Bear sounds, so that album should sound pretty cool. I suppose I'm looking forward to the War on Drugs, too. Oh, and a new Randy Newman. And the Algiers album is great, so there's that.

Another new one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71xmrULJ-ms

those two singles are among their bests already. really psyched.

i love the idea of a band doing the same thing over and over again, with slight variations, working the perfect formulation.

there are two singles?

those two releases i meant!

nice, i had no idea they leaked two songs yet.

If anyone wants a sneak peak at lots of other new songs off the album, there's a rip of their Paris show from last week here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEe_yCVLQSc

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/7889813/the-national-first-number-1-billboard-songs-chart

This has now leaked

i think "turtleneck" is one of their worst songs ever but the rest of this is good

I like pretty much everything the band has ever done, but this is not as good as last album. Of course, the last album was about as good as they get.

yeah otm

i also don't know why they insist on putting out hour-long albums

^^^ Yes!! More Boxer-length albums please The National ...

gonna listen soon but it must be said that "dark side of the gym" is an excellent song title

song is nearly as good as the title tbh

I like pretty much everything the band has ever done, but this is not as good as last album. Of course, the last album was about as good as they get.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, September 4, 2017 11:26 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah otm

― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Monday, September 4, 2017

ya'll are crazy

no I think they're otm

wtf is up with matt's voice on the new one's opener

They've never made a great album and they peaked in 2010. By 2013 they were almost parodying heterosexual middle age angst.

Counterpoint: they've made at least two probably three great records, and have been almost parodying themselves for the last couple, which could be the same as parodying heterosexual middle age angst.

every national album is a long drive to van nuys, where you trade in your minivan for a mazda miata

this is their best-sounding album at the very least

three quite good songs (The System Only Dreams, I'll Still Destroy You, Dark Side of the Gym) with the rest being mostly pleasant but unmemorable means this definitely is a National album

They peaked in 2007 for me, and held that peak reasonably tight until the following album. Last album over-egged the pudding for me; too many instruments, too much in the arrangements. The lead songs from this that I've heard seem like they've stripped back a bit, which I've enjoyed.

they peaked on mr november and everything since has been indistinguishable slowness with a few highlights

i stand by this rockism

I like "turtleneck"!

the Obama associations have spoiled "Mr. November" and "Fake Empire" for me tbh

not feeling this album at all

what obama associations with those songs?

Fake Empire was used as intro music, if I recall correctly. I think it was playing before he went out for his Grant Park victory speech.

they made "Mr November" shirts w O's face on it iirc

awesome shirts thb

tbh*

Been sitting on a promo of this for ages but waiting for the right time to listen to it (in part b/c listening to a National album in the summer seems wrong). Trouble Will Find Me turned out to be a really important album for me; probably my favorite indie rock record of the last five years.

Should I just bite the bullet and buy the vinyl, album unheard? I'm not expecting to like it as much as the last one, just so long as I like it more than High Violet

Yeah, HV is the only of their records I (almost) never listen to

this is probably my least fave since the early records tbh

TWFM only really opened up for me after ~20 listens so I'm patient

Had no idea he apparently writes his lyrics with his wife.

TWFM was a realllly slow grower, yeah. I liked that album's length, since on most early listens I didn't make it deep into the album's second half, where a lot of the really great stuff is. Little surprises to find later.

This one feels backloaded to me atm

dark side of the gym is a good song title

I thought we were going to get something pretty interesting with record given that "The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness" was the lead off track but man this thing is dull which is saying something given we're talking about the band who's brand is all about being sad about being normal.

"sad about being normal" -- otm

I can't tell if this is dull-good or dull-boring. Maybe more the latter.

this band does some of their best work when they're being boring imo; trying to be interesting is how you end up with a High Violet

Do people not like High Violet? it has some of their best songs on it!

It's the only one I have trouble getting into, though I have to concede I am trouble building up much interest in this one.

The first track on High Violet is mixed absolutely fucking horribly and gives me an instant headache. I don't know what they did but it's fucking horrible.

England, Vanderlyle, the one about bees, though - they're right up there as my favourite National tracks.

Mouthy have you heard the "alternate mix" of Terrible Love? IIRC that was the version they were gonna use till they decided they preferred the more raw recording.

I haven't but I'm aware of it; keep meaning to.

That Trump toilet song ("Turtleneck") embarrassed me. If this is evolution, give me more dirges.

thank you. it sucks

"guilty party" and "i'll still destroy you" are the mvps here

yeah, those and "dark side..."

the electronic flourishes don't feel very well-integrated to me

The System Dreams in Total Darkness is one of the best things they've done and it made me hopeful the album might be a bit better than usual

v happy to see hate for the "terrible love" mix. that is the worst recording of music that exists.

yeah and the fact that it fucks up such a great song too... dunno how anybody involved can feel good about that

my god i am listening to the alternate version for the first time, and i am so happy that i can listen to this song now

so i guess that confirms it's not the worst recording but the worst mix

sheesh such delicate ears around here

still can't believe laura palmer whispered the album mix of 'terrible love' into his ear

“Goodbyes always take us half an hour,” complains the narrator of Nobody Else Will Be There on leaving a party. “Can’t we just go home?”

narrator otm

If Conversation 16 wasn't on HV I would easily think of that as the best National record.

that's one of their best songs wtf!

those lyrics.

most hilarious chorus definitely.

it's like a Berninger caricature of his lyrics, which I suppose may be some sort of meta joke that I missed.

Its a bit National-by-numbers but I really like Carin At The Liquor Store off the new one too

(Xpost) I'd drop both Conversation 16 and the awful Lemonworld and then I think HV is up there with Boxer.

Lemonworld is probably my favorite national song lol

is there anything as good as "Pink Rabbits" on this one?

no

ok thanks, i'll check out the tracks y'all like. "Dark Side of the Gym" is a dope song title

why does everyone like that song title?

sounds cool. evocative. slightly absurd

it seems like a very bad song title to me. I'd feel v stupid saying something like, "hey, please play that hit The National song 'Dark Side of the Gym' for me next, my man" to the rock 'n' bowl dj

song titles should be a unique stream of numbers that take on the song's meaning if the song is good enough. naming your song 'Dark Side of the Gym' is like naming your new car design 'Toyota Matrix'

England, Vanderlyle, the one about bees, though - they're right up there as my favourite National tracks.

― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Friday, September 8, 2017

OTM

well yeah, it's silly. i like that. mitigates the MOR ennui of their music & image.

xxp

it is a perfectly Nationalian song title/sentiment imo

never a good idea to talk to a DJ when they're performing imo

to a rock 'n' bowl dj, spoken song titles are the keys to the hash table containing all playable songs. but the hash function has been given to the artist, and it is plain irresponsible to title your song with a pun on another title. collisions are inevitable. especially when ginuwine - pony is playing so loudly.

what is it a pun of?

yeah I don't know what's up with the production on that first song on High Violet, it's aggressively, intentionally shitty. Anyway, new album, ok, whatever, it's fine so far.

High Violet is great and the production on the first song is great too, no idea what you are all talking about!

Not listened to the new album yet. Been a National fan since the first album, their early shows were fucking intense. With every new album I dread they inch closer to being U2.0. Please assure me this is not the case (yet).

They're nothing like U2.

i've never understood that comparison at all

Arcade Fire are a lot like U2. The National are not.

I never said they were; I said I fear for them becoming like U2. And am glad this is not the case.

I'm faintly baffled that anyone would fear that.

They went from obscuro indie-outfit to stadium-sized band; their songs got 'big audience friendly' over the years, too. I like it all the same (though I def prefer the early works). It's not that much of a stretch, surely? In any case I'm glad they aren't U2, 's all.

Personally I fear them becoming Nickelback. Not saying they are Nickelback, just that I fear them becoming Nickelback

Ok...

lol sorry about that, that was mean. Just weird logic though. I'm not sure I even buy their songs have become bigger and more audience friendly. In a lot of ways their albums have become more hermetic over time—lots of moments that seem almost purposefully devoid of showmanship in the interest of setting a mood

nickelback have some tracks

No offense taken Evan, all good. But:

I'm not sure I even buy their songs have become bigger and more audience friendly.

For real? The s/t and 'Sad Songs' had both very quiet and 'screamo' songs. Alligator and consequent albums after that showed a way more polished sound imo.

Alligator is the one with their big arena tune. But that was 2005. The last album in particular, and what I've heard of this one (which I'm really enjoying so far), both feel like inward retreats.

Not that the band can't sell the shit out of even their buzzkill songs live, but I haven't heard anything from them lately that would make a radio programmer go "Yes! Yes! That's the one!"

I almost forgot about the original version of “Terrible Love.” I just replaced the file with the alternate one in my music library a few years ago and never looked back. But gee, that original mix was indeed horrendous and headache-inducing.

and thus, even on an exclusive forum for music aficionados, misguided opinions on the National were widespread :P

forgot about this today, will play it next week.

it's lovely but whoever said above that it's mostly unmemorable is otm. High Violet was the epitome of what i desired from them (distilled pure middle aged somber angst) and everything else feels like variations on the theme. it sounds of a piece w/ some other albums i've been loving recently (man orch, brand new) at least in terms of a dreary aesthetic but far less dynamic.

HV tracks also amazing live

and otm

I might give this one a spin, but given that I can't remember a single thing about the album before this I'm not optimistic that I'll find much to enjoy about it. Alligator is okay in places, though.

listen its ok to give up on a band if <10% of their discography interests you.

Yeah this is a band that I think is very unrated and very prone to stereotyping and inaccurate generalizations. But that being said, they're also very much not everybody's thing. I kinda lost my will to keep saying "no really you should give this a try." It's like, if you listen to Pink Rabbits and it really does nothing for you, then you might as well move on

For me this is a band that's become more valuable over time. Especially as so many indie rock acts (and especially white male indie rock acts) lost their touch over the last half decade, they're one of the few bands from that scene left standing that can still deliver that fix I used to get from these kinds of records. But if you can find that somehow in like a War on Drugs or LCD Soundsystem record, I understand how those would hold a lot more appeal

it's weird, i think this is their most immediately accessible record since probably alligator but that's part of why i don't like it as much as their others, relistens are less rewarding than they've traditionally been, the album is just gets more flat and antisocial the more i engage with it. and i was sort of expecting the opposite as they really swaddle most of these songs in inviting electronic blinks but it oddly makes the songs sound more haphazardly arranged and unfinished

and the reason i like this band is because of the way they play together as a band, even their most fussily arranged arabesques usually have some good drumming, but the closest they come to sounding like a band on the new one is "turtleneck," which sucks, and the best songs seem the most liberated from their interplay ("i'll still destroy you")

the album is just gets more flat and antisocial the more i engage with it.

Yep -- like a cute guy you meet at a friend's apartment party who smiles at your jokes and talks to you about music but becomes obviously bored if not sullen

Dang that sucks so much to hear. Most impressive thing about this band for me had been how replayable their records are.

I like what the National are and represent, but I don't find it bears repetition- not enough to listen to album after album. Which is to say, I get enough from tracks on Sad Songs, Alligator and Boxer to not need any more, because it's only going to be a variation on that Berninger/National theme. I'm now one of those people that go on the internet to talk about things they haven't seen or listened to.

wait, what do they represent?

What I have to flesh out my undercooked ramblings now? Jeez.

Well, Berninger's arc has always seemed a relatively narrow one, tracking 'his' (people like him/me) neuroses as he staggers into middle-age. And for all their credentials, the band are pretty conservative, too. At their best their Robert Lowell in a haunted ballroom; at their most average they're just an empty apartment. And 'Dark Side of the Gym' just signals stuff like 'Bad Neighbours' to me - a movie title which makes watching the actual movie entirely unnecessary.

i fear them turning into coldplay more than u2.

"High Violet is great and the production on the first song is great too, no idea what you are all talking about!"

are you listening to the same mix everyone else is? because it sounds like shit; it's all fuzzy and compressed and transistory and shit sounding. I'm not sure what the intention was but the result is just crappy for such a good song.

"i fear them turning into coldplay more than u2."

to be fair, the thinking dad bod's coldplay.

I love the fact that the two complaints itt is "they're too boring" and "I don't like it when their production is raw"

That song is not raw. It's fucking horrible. Rid Of Me is raw. And awesome sounding.

turtleneck is sick wtf

TBH I think that “Terrible Love” is a great song — in terms of songwriting and rhe actual performance and mood and emotions etc. — but it’s ruined by the mixing. The album version is just a brick of noise; when I heard the alternate one, I was like Yes, finally! It breathes, it’s alive.

I’m actually quite curious why they made these particular production choices for only one track on the album — the remaining High Violet songs are nowhere nearly as compressed; they sound nice and reverb-y. Have they addressed it in interviews?

And OTM with Rid of Me being an example of extremely raw music that doesn’t make your head hurt. But that’s Albini’s touch.

and Polly Jean Harvey's.

always thought "terrible love" was a demo they couldn't replicate the energy of so they just slapped the demo on the record

It's like they wanted some kind of MBV fuzz over it, but just fucked it up.

and Polly Jean Harvey's.

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

Of course! Now I realise I made it sound like it was just Albini’s idea or something, but obviously it was Polly’s intention to make such a raw and uncompromising piece of work. And she seems to care very much how her records sound.

Back to the National ― I gave the record only two semi-distracted spins so far, and their albums tend to be growers, so I won’t form any broad statements for now. All I can say it seems less cluttered than Trouble Will Find Me, and I enjoy that spaciousness in the sound. Matt’s lyrics seems somehow more . . . misanthropic. I’m not sure, English is not my first language, so they’ll also need some time to sink in properly. There were some moments where the electronic flourishes made me raise my eyebrows but I need more time.

iirc they adressed the production on HV in interviews around the release, talking about how they'd recorded in a kind of home studio and how that was a liberating process, and after reading that when I listened to the record I was like wtf get back in a real studio!

I think the entire record has poor production (slightly cluttered, claustrophobic, metallic) but Terrible Love takes the cake

I have grown to like the songs though, esp from hearing them live where they work just fine

the Terrible Love demo sounds better but there's still something unfinished or unrealized about the song to my ears

tbqh i remember seeing them open for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (lol) at the Troubadour circa Alligator and thinking "man i feel like I just saw U2"

always thought "terrible love" was a demo they couldn't replicate the energy of so they just slapped the demo on the record

They did an absolutely knockout version of it on Conan a few weeks before they released the studio version. Made the mix that much more perplexing; the song kills live.

as down as i've been about this record "day i die" frickin' rocks

Fuck you, Karl https://t.co/3gXr8DYryw

— The National (@TheNational) September 9, 2017

yeah I don't know what the choices were behind that mix. it's like when Low chose to hard pan the vocals on Drums and Guns. Why on earth would you do this? it is bizarre and wrong.

you grow up comfortable in cincinatti. your parents pay for you to go to oberlin ($$$$$). you're so talented! you record five, six, seven albums? you never had that many ideas to begin with. but you're talented!

Wow, that's bitter.

Yeah, weird.

the pressure's on the national
there's one to go, the same is true
and all this time we couldn't forget you
golden, what's the name
down to the sea

turn up The National
the neighbors are sleeping

Really enjoying this record. Production is just perfect, rich but uncluttered. I like a little slack on National albums, that sense of leisure is a big part of the appeal for me

Really enjoying this record. Production is just perfect, rich but uncluttered. I like a little slack on National albums, that sense of leisure is a big part of the appeal for me

KROQ played "Day I Die" today, not their style of music at all.

Can you all clarify what BESIDES the distorted guitar effect on Terrible Love you find so awful sounding? I haven't listened in awhile but I remember everything else about the song sounding... normal? I have to assume you're taking issue with something more overall about the mix because I wouldn't expect all the National fans on ilx to have adopted say Guitar Magazine's opinions of what is an acceptable approach and what's not for guitar tone. Because the band seems to be going for an intentional deteriorating distortion with elements building around it as it goes. However, on the other hand it is hard to imagine general studio production objectively bad enough to warrant the collective hate here.

distorted guitar in the verse sounds off, as if it's coming from another room and out of sync as well (prob due to intentionally off delay pedal or smth)

no cohesion in the bridge, which is where the song starts to break up - maybe it's the eq'ing and reverb that's off and makes the players sound so isolated (in a dissonant way)

chorus is when the song really self destructs, matt's vocals overprocessed and drums running off to no effect

while the verse is decent, I think the chorus disappoints melodically as well, so even if the alternative mix is better, it's never going to sound great to my ears

Listening to the different mixes side by side (both on the expanded edition of HV on Spotify) the differences are obvious. The 'distorted guitar effect' sounds more like it and all the other instruments were recorded onto old & half disintegrated magnetic tape, and to me it's the vocals that sound like they're coming from another room. I wouldn't say it hurts my ears but the alternative version is obviously an easier listen.

I don't think I want to hear this supposed Karl Rove quote over and over again.

It's difficult to put my finger on as specifically as some here have, but it's just always given me an almost instant headache, in a way that almost nothing else has - not the wildest, most distorted Swans or MBV or Sunn o)))) or anything else I've heard.

the album version of "terrible love" sounds like it takes place underwater, it's especially apparent when "sorrow" starts and you actually hear space and separation in the mix

I wonder if that might meaningfully connect to the lyrics in some way.

I had always imagined the distorted guitar was coming out of this old broken radio with bad frequency sitting on the floor next to the band, and they start building a song around it . I thought they were intentionally going for that kind of effect. Again as far as the rest of the song goes I'll have to give it a proper revisit.

Aaron talks about it in this Pitchfork interview

We had re-recorded "Terrible Love" because we had the opportunity to do it. The original version of "Terrible Love" on the record is my demo, basically. Bryan drummed to it with one mic. And then when we started playing it live, we realized it was this beast of a live song and that it was really fun to play, so one day we recorded it again and it came out pretty well.

Pitchfork: The [new version of "Terrible Love"](http://pitchfork.com/news/40457-video-the-national-terrible-love/ "new version of "Terrible Love"" ) is awesome. When I heard it, I thought it should've been on the album.

AD: I prefer the sort of murky, blurry version that's on the record, just because I like the guitar sound. There's all those accidental harmonies in it that I like, but maybe that's just me being too attached to something because I can't recreate it. That was part of why we used it; we just couldn't make the guitar sound like that again. But live, it is probably the biggest song off High Violet. We end the show with it. It's really intense, and it becomes very unhinged towards the end. When we first played the song, we played it on "Jimmy Fallon" maybe two months before the record came out. So people got attached to that version that they saw on YouTube. Then, when the album came out, I think that's why people were disappointed. It didn't have the same kind of drumming that really kicks in. So we re-recorded it, more for ourselves. We just wanted to see how it would come out, and then it came out really well. It became the version that's been pushed to radio. I'm glad that there's two versions. I still think that the album version is more appropriate to the album, but it's good that there's this more high-fidelity version of it out there.

I have no problem with the general direction of that guitar sound. I just wish they had recorded everything better. As Brad says, there's very little space or separation in the mix. The drums at 1:45 should kill, and they just blend into everything because everything else sounds like it's embedded into the-wall-of-bad-sound guitar, which isn't doing anything that is more interesting than the song as a whole. Anyway, I get that there may be higher order reasons why the muddy recording is favored by some.

It seems like they were attached to the harmonics and droning of the original guitar sound, but then that track occupied the whole spectrum. They kind of recreated the feel of the guitar sound in the alternate by adding droning strings to a cleaner, tremolo guitar. It has a similar feel but leaves room for the song to grow and allows some separation between instruments and parts.

You can also do things to make a single insane guitar sound good in the mix, but you might need something better than a demo-quality recording.

Kevin Shields on Loomer guitar sound: "It's definitely one of the few stereo guitar tracks. There's no effect on that one, it's basically just the straight guitar sound. It sounds unusual because it was a Strat neck and a Jaguar body with EMG pickups in it. It was just a weird monstrous thing. It had a slightly harder, more midrange-y than a Jaguar/Jazzmaster. It's a lot more high frequency, strange sound. We used partly the sound of the guitar plugged straight into the desk and mixed in slightly and that's got something going on in the high end. But when we mixed it, what gives it a lot of its sound is that it's so heavily compressed with the drums that it sounds like a train. In fact, that was the sound we were trying to get at, like it sounds like you're on a train or something."

It sounds like they were working with 3 tracks, one of which was much brighter, to make that work.

I suppose it's probably 2 tracks: one the insane low-mid-rangey, sounds-like-a-train and blends with the drums and the other the brighter straight-into-the-desk track that could be an entirely different instrument.

to complete my five postagraph essay, i'll note that falling in love with a worse demo is a pretty human and forgivable thing. most of ilx did this with grimes' realiti after all.

i mean it's sorta like "turtleneck" on the new record, i get the thought process behind the decision to include it i just extremely disagree with it

what I don't understand is how they didn't get that droning guitar bit right on the alternate version, since they do it fine live

this album is absolutely wonderful, probably about as good as I could have hoped for. Really smart sequencing, with the anthems frontloaded and the somber loner songs tucked away in the back (since it's spread across two LPs you get to choose which vibe you want). I can't stand "Turtleneck" but at least it's tucked away at the end of side 2, so I can just kill the record early.

I'm enjoying it a lot as well, nice to hear them do electric drums and synths

I can't stand "Turtleneck" but at least it's tucked away at the end of side 2, so I can just kill the record early.

Either you or spotify have a copy with the sides mislabelled.

Side 2 of a 4-sided double LP

today i learnt that double lps are still a thing.

literally any album over 46 minutes gets two LPs today and it's v annoying

#1 album in the UK

Wtf?

dunno, why WTF? I saw someone else expressing surprise that this was advertised on the side of a bus. they play festivals and near stadiums at this point. they're quite big. also, considering how few people actually purchase albums now, you see all kinds of weird surprising things in charts. i think Paul Draper's album was top 10.

for sure

Sparks celebrate their first Top 10 in more than 40 years with Hippopotamus at Number 7. It’s the second highest-charting album of the US art-rock duo’s career, behind 1974’s Number 4-peaking Kimono My House.

meanwhile the Top 40 singles chart is utterly devoid of any rock/alt whatsoever in the UK since streaming started to count.

Just never thought they were that big over here to get a Number One album, especially as the #2 new entry by Nothing But Thieves seems to have been advertised everywhere.

But yeah, I guess album sales have dropped off a cliff and I see The Waterboys entered at #8

Anyone going to see them live in London next week?

no point of view or deja

for sure

Sparks celebrate their first Top 10 in more than 40 years with Hippopotamus at Number 7. It’s the second highest-charting album of the US art-rock duo’s career, behind 1974’s Number 4-peaking Kimono My House.

― Number None,

Gary Numan in at number two this week as well. He'll probably be out the top 75 next week.

just realized dark side of the gym is a leonard cohen lyric!

this new one is more of a 'high violet' than a 'trouble will find me'

otm

HV is relatively tight by comparison, this new one is the most in need of ruthless self-editing they've ever been. I miss the economy of the Boxer era material a lot.

Didn’t they say prior to this one that they’d tried to avoid self-editing?

Prefer this to Trouble, but not as good as HV or Boxer for me.

Man, I not only totally forgot about this album, I forgot what it was called and had to look it up just to search for this thread.

well "carin at the liquor store" is still just on the right side of the line between "O Deep Thought, write me a The National song" and "this is the most perfect The National song"

Alligator = Reckoning
Boxer = Document
High Violet = Out of Time
Trouble Will Find Me = Automatic for the People
Sleep Well Beast = Monster

Dark Side of the Gym gets its own video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ICyy1V6n4c

This record has aged really well for me. The vaguely electronic production, which sometimes sounded silly and distracting to me on first listen, nicely binds the album and distinguishes it from the previous ones. Even the songs at the end that sound like they were written for Trouble Will Find Me have their own character.

Yeah, it's def a good album

yup. i expected it to grow and it really has. saw them a couple nights ago and they're playing a new one (Light Years) that slays...

https://youtu.be/ugRw7GFcu3w?t=1h20m52s

saw them last night in Berkeley and it kind of sucked TBH. they played the night before and apparently it went much better so I think they were tired. very low energy show. also was annoyed that I went last night to see Cat Power and apparently she played right at 6:30; when the show was listed as starting at 7 in some places (and 6:30 on the tickets, which I still assumed was door time).

yeah i was there the night before with Big Thief opening. we knew it was 6:30 start and they went on at 6:45. crazy early but also super nice to get home before midnight on a school night

Caught this tour as well. Was also annoyed by how laid back the whole thing was. It rained last time, and I think that helped.

(I missed Cat power, in case that wasn't clear).

My wife was flying to Philly to visit friends and also to catch the same show tomorrow night and she had an airline fuckup with the plane being taken out of service at SFO this morning just before boarding, and finally had to cancel the entire trip becaues they couldn't get her to Philly in a normal amount of time. She did however see Chan playing with her kid at the airport. Wonder if she's going to make it out there.

i have warmed up to this album too, it's pretty good. i saw them this year as well in a festive environment so i only saw like eight songs. it was great as the bill was filled with all these modern day glow indie bands. When they played it felt like a goth band compared to all the other BS that was going on.

I went to see this band last night.

The projections consisted of a series of full screen colours preceded with the title of the song that the band was playing, one colour per song. There was no other content but the single colour.

Every musician onstage was more than competent. The drummer in particular was extremely compelling.

I had seen this band several times before and found the lead singer to be of middling quality. His schtick suits him better as he ages. After the show, somebody referred to him as a dad role model and I said “he shouldn’t be drinking whiskey onstage then, he should be bbq’ing.” We then talked about how The National were fans of The Dead and how The Dead were all about onstage bbq.

There were nineteen musicians onstage all told and, basically, I have never heard a set of more featureless music. All chords were root position, all string arrangements were pads with no variation. All lyrics were complete nothing banal nothingness.

I am not familiar with the new album or “Sleep Well Beast” but as I watched I started thinking about lyrics of theirs I could recall. I remembered seeing a roomful of people screaming “I’ll explain everything to the geeks!!!” and feeling like the lyrics was so cryptic that it became meaningless.

There was one black person at the show, my date. I started to wonder, like, is this music good? I remember really enjoying “Boxer”. I googled the band while the concert went on and saw that the band was not just “good”, but “great”; that their previous album had won critical acclaim and a Grammy.

The show ended and everybody got up and gave a standing ovation. I thought to myself, “maybe white people take comfort in things that are featureless.”

In the car on the way home, The Hip came on, who I’ve always thought of as “The better version of The National”. Ironically, every member of The National is a more proficient musician than any member of The Hip, but this featurelessness, this nothingness. What is its appeal? Why do people enjoy music that is this static?

The band started their encore with a song with a long title, the first single from Sleep Well Beast, it was a good song and I enjoyed it.

Then they played Fake Empire and I texted my friend “I’m half awake at a fake rock show”

thanks for the thesis

I love the National but tbh I would never think to see them live post-Boxer - they're 100% a studio band to me.

Really makes you think.

They're a moody chamber rock act. They've been like that for years and years. Not sure what to make of all these people saying they were fans of Boxer but nothing else, or would not see them live after Boxer. What's changed?

Who were all of the extra musicians, just strings and horns?

Also, all this weird misplaced criticisms of their singer as somehow more of a dad than any other dad in rock and roll. (hint: there are lots of them) Is it because he wears glasses now?

I love the National but tbh I would never think to see them live post-Boxer - they're 100% a studio band to me.

― Simon H., Thursday, April 25, 2019 7:33 AM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they're still really good, the way they play the sleep well beast tracks live ("walk it back" especially) convinced me of that record's quality. they hold together a lot of moving parts

They're a moody chamber rock act.

They are a remarkably featureless moody chamber rock act! When that trumpet solo entered in at the end of "Fake Empire" I was like.. OK, here's some content, finally. I'm also very into "low content" music generally, but there's something strange about The National that I can only say is "featureless"... coupled, generally, with lyrics that are interesting combinations of words that don't seem to mean anything

There was the five core band members, a second drummer, a second other dude kind of behind him, two backup singers, Leslie Feist on some songs, Ben and Kyle (their standard brass players), and a six piece string section. That makes 18. Maybe I accidentally counted a tech when I was tallying them up

I am actually here to argue that they are in fact actually really bad and serve as comfort food for people with low standards

Ha, not only does comfort food for people with low standards describe most music, but it would make a great album title!

New board description as well.

Should also say that while I respect they might not be any one person's thing, or overrated, to cite the National as particularly bad music for people with low standards might indicate standards that are far too high!

lyrics that are interesting combinations of words that don't seem to mean anything

lyrics of "fake empire" are particularly straightforward, most national songs are about feeling alone and uncomfortable in your skin and noticing an unbridgeable distance between yourself and others, plus alcoholism, afaict, not hard to grasp

I also think the banalities of his lyrics are not only intentional but highlights! BTW, xpost, the Hip? Do you mean ... The Tragically Hip?

sometimes they achieve this effect through abstraction more than detail but they do both cf. "am i the one you think about / when you're sitting in your fainting chair drinking pink rabbits" "i'm so surprised you want to dance with me now / i was just getting used to living life without you around"

xp

and the hip are a bad comparison, downie was leagues ahead of either berninger as a lyricist but he was leagues ahead of fuckin everybody on earth. the hip were a bar band with a poet for a frontman, the national are an indie rock band whose songs are like turning musical box constructions with a depressive but often funny and un-self-serious frontman

both bands share a lot of qualities with r.e.m., though

Berninger does have a lyrical tic that tends toward tautology, for lack of a better word. Like (paraphrasing) "I owe money to the money to the money I owe" or "I'm too tired to talk about talking about being tired" or whatever. But I think those turnarounds are also kind of funny.

I call that move the Woomble.

Antimetaboles gone awry. On account of the drinking, no doubt.

I learned a new word!

I'm a big fan of "I better get my shit together, better gather my shit."

I brought up The Hip because I have indeed felt comfortable and happy watching dad rock as a member of an almost-entirely white audience. There are more differences between both bands, though.

I was thinking about the projections, which indeed were just solid colours following titles for each song. Could've been a lateral Jarman reference? I know The National enjoy their avant-garde references. But the entire projection affair created a metaphor for the music below... high production values, enormous numbers of personnel onstage, expensive gear, undeniable individual musical facility with every participant, but a result that was, save for Berninger's vocals featureless. When one of the Dessner's took a rare solo, or the trumpet player did a thing, it was such a contrast to everything else that was going on onstage. It's not groovy enough to enjoy the band settling it, it's not harmonically interesting enough to feel as if any individual song was necessary, the strings and brass generally didn't do more than hold down pads to what was going on. I like boring music, I like dad music, I like all the components that make up this band, but the sensation was one, specifically, of featurelessness, and the excitement and appreciation of the performance in the crowd was undeniable, and here I am trying to unpack why the hell this band is more (globally) successful and critically revered than The Hip were, for example.

Also I don't deny that Berninger has his moments, lyrically. I scan his lyric sheets and think "that is nice" as often as "I don't have any idea what that means and neither does anybody else, I suspect". There is an appreciation I have for the way the band has branded themselves, naming their website after an old song (American Mary), naming their online community after an old album (Cherry Tree). There is a repetition of tropes: a man pinning flowers on a woman, hold my drink, a blue ribbon, a red ribbon, another drink, a reference to a place, a reference to a time of day, my mind is hazy, and so on. Every band has a novelty song that becomes a hit but Berninger are too focused on existing within this particular narrow lane of banality that there is no room for novelty, beyond, I guess, "Mr. November" (because it contains the word "fuck").

The representation of alcohol both within the band's lyrics and their onstage presence is something I find disconcerting more than appealing, not because I'm clutching pearls about it, but because it feels demonstrative and exaggerated, but it doesn't make me feel entertained, it just makes me feel uncomfortable, as it would seeing somebody get too drunk at a party.

I do like the tautologies that Berninger writes. I tried to put on "Boxer" this morning to see if "hearing the studio recordings" would clear my head and reset me back into casual fandom, but I scanned down the list of songs and realized I didn't want to hear any of them. I am very confused about this band. I am feeling this morning like it is some kind of trick. Some kind of capitalist trick. An accident of a lot of money being spent on gear and alcohol, a lot of accumulation of power and personnel. And people enjoying the music is an accident, too. It feels like a hiccup. I understand the appeal of 95% of the music out there but The National still confuse me.

R.E.M. are another such band that confuse me. I don't understand what Michael Stipe is doing.

Like, aside from showing up and getting paid, that is

That explains a lot.

Oh no, I like R.E.M., but I don't understand what Harborcoat is about, neither do you, and neither does Michael Stipe

And… that's totally fine? Enigmas in art seem to be a dealbreaker for you (which isn't to say I find The National particularly enigmatic).

most live music is bad in the wrong mood or state of mind. sometimes the feeling sticks with you. you are not a recently awoke observer of a capitalist brainwashing conspiracy. maybe, for example, you were just feeling self-conscious about the date you planned.

The representation of alcohol both within the band's lyrics and their onstage presence is something I find disconcerting more than appealing, not because I'm clutching pearls about it, but because it feels demonstrative and exaggerated, but it doesn't make me feel entertained, it just makes me feel uncomfortable, as it would seeing somebody get too drunk at a party.

Interesting digression imo. Like, Eddie Vedder used to go through a bottle of wine over a night, but he seems to have stopped, and PJ music doesn't really reference alcohol. But a year or two back my friend took me to see the Old 97s (I was never really a fan), and almost every song seemed to be about drinking, yet the band had nothing harder than bottled water on stage, which I found ... weird. Drive-By Truckers used to pass a bottle of Jack Daniels around, but they seem to have stopped (as the shows got longer and they got older? also ... dealt with substance abuse/drinking problems, iirc?). Berninger, fwiw, supposedly suffers from some degree of stage-fright, at the least. I looked back on something I wrote here about the doc made about his brother, and at least at the time (I only saw it that once) I wrote that it implied he and his brother both share some degree or reliance on alcohol. I know Berninger has said drinking (and pot) has played a big role in his lyric writing. Don't know if that is still the case.

dave matthews eats a whole roast on stage when performing 'too much'

I've definitely become highly attuned to just how pro every band seems to be these days, with static setlists and strict musical cues and a general adherence to rigid song structures and arrangements. I don't know how much that has to do with capitalist brainwashing, more like big audiences that deserve better than a band fucking around/up? I also read that Berninger now has a teleprompter, which supposedly helps him with his stage fright. But it did make me consider that literally every single arena show I see enlists a teleprompter, and never/rarely smaller shows, and I think it's less that those smaller acts have easier to remember lyrics and more that, yeah, there might be more wiggle room to forget than in a less forgiving huge-venue environment.

I've mentioned before how Springsteen seems pretty glued to his teleprompter these days - watching the Broadway show was kind of awkward because all these stage movements that made him look thoughtful or sad often seemed, at least in person, designed to let him see the prompter. But I've also mentioned an awesome letter Nils sent the Maryland paper defending Springsteen and his prompter live, saying, hey, this past tour we played 170 different songs, sometimes for the first/only time ever, many not rehearsed, give the dude a break.

Haha Sufjan that was funny

I think "enigmas" in art aren't so much of a deal-breaker so much as it felt, to me, last night, that this wasn't about "enigma" so much as it was about, well, featurelessness, meaninglessness, non-statements occupying space and sound in the place of a statement. I guess I started to kind of spin it around mentally a little bit, thinking that this kind of "non-statement" itself was comforting to attendees, that it didn't require thought or processing, it didn't intrude upon the identity of the audience. It created a listening environment that was strictly about the spectacle of a large number of highly competent musicians and money spent on production. In fact I feel much more "this way" toward Michael Stipe as a lyricist/singer than I do Matt Berninger, that the singer's presence and thesis is not about "enigma" so much as it is about a kind of paucity of intention. And I wondered why people would be attracted to this, because I myself am not, not really, at least, not right now and not last night.

It wasn't a date just fyi, my friend just happened to be the one who wanted to come with me to the show, and we noted without prejudice the striking homogeneity of the crowd.

Heads up, not unique to the National.

Oh, for sure. Part of me was wondering if whatever mechanism it is that attracts a certain subset of listeners to this musical experience might be termed as a kind of "classicism", that is, the same attraction that somebody might have toward abstract painting and/or symphony concerts

There are many different ways of approaching abstract painting and concerts of orchestral music, and not all of them involve a yearning for classicism. That said, if 'classicism' is shorthand for 'resting on one's laurels', I do agree that The National's music has tended towards self-canonization in recent years, which is why I'm indifferent to most of their output post-Boxer.

I tried to command-f the word "featureless" and my computer exploded.

Anyway, I have also felt that their compositions had kind of... lost some texture or dynamics on most of the albums I've heard following Boxer. For instance, as a guitar player that focuses on it I noticed that there was more finger picking among tracks on Alligator and by High Violet there was more soft strumming of basic chords. That's a specific example, but the sonic textures overall seemed less distinct and the newer songs themselves are harder to differentiate for me. I haven't really listened to the most recent album, though!

it didn't require thought or processing

this is not true in my experience of listening to the national. "sea of love" is a weird, lopsided-sounding song, i enjoy thinking about how it works

this thread got weird imo

like their thing may or may not be your thing but to suggest that bc it's not your thing it's also uninteresting musically in some sort of absolute way... i mean jam bands bore me to tears but i don't feel a need to make that their fault.

You've never seen someone present personal musical preferences as objective truth before?

fwfw Some piece I read said that starting with the last couple albums the band no longer records together in a dedicated home studio. They're too far flung around the world so contribute kind of digital-era piecemeal. Also fwiw, they all live in super-hip/cool places except the MVP drummer, who still lives in Cincinnati, so that's pretty cool. Might explain a sonic shift, whatever the intent.

i mean they write songs piecemeal but i'm pretty sure they still record together

the whole narrative around the last album that they all went to one of the guys' home recording studio and lived there for weeks and spent time together and played in the pool with their kids, etc., etc.

I haven't seen the National in several years but last time I saw them they were anything but featureless. drummer's incredible, the twins are inventive guitar players, together they create a lot of dynamic and interesting and moving music, and Berninger's intensity/shtick/whatever, for me, is compelling. all imo, of course.

have the records become kind of featureless? that i could buy.

also, i agree with this:

I've definitely become highly attuned to just how pro every band seems to be these days

also if it was important to me to know what Michael Stipe is talking about in Harborcoat i wouldn't like any pop or rock music, who gives a shit it sounds good

I have to use the word "featureless" because it's the only word that applies! Boring sounds pejorative (and it isn't, boring music can be great etc. etc.), low-content can be great too (and this isn't low-content, it's more like... well, yeah.)

And they are absolutely the finest imaginable musicians, the drummer is truly incredible.

i mean jam bands bore me to tears but i don't feel a need to make that their fault.

I'm not making anything anybody's fault, sheesh, it's the worst thing in the world that we can't speak critically about "the work" and "the listening process" without it turning into a discussion about blame. There's a lot a lot of music out there I have no interest in, but I understand the synapse between what it is and why people listen to it. I am having trouble parsing that out with The National. I don't even consider myself a non-fan really, I have affection for stuff they've done, I'm just trying to puzzle things out is all, and why I felt so alienated last night.

I must have misunderstood elements of this piece:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/27/the-national-sleep-well-beast-interview

Wherein it says they all live in different places now:

The list of places where the members of the National now reside reads like the locations for a fashionable chain restaurant: Copenhagen (Aaron), Paris (Bryce), Los Angeles (Matt), Long Island (Scott) and Cincinnati (Bryan). This is a marked change from previous records. Until 2015, Aaron owned a house in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn and rented out the upstairs duplex to Berninger; Bryce had an apartment on the same street; the Devendorfs lived not far away. When the band wanted to record an album, they just walked a few steps to the garage in Aaron’s garden.

And then there was this, which I think is what I misread:

There have been sticky times for the National, even moments where the band feared it might implode. Before beginning Sleep Well Beast, Bryce Dessner was explicit that he wanted some elements to change. “There was a transition in technology, which happened around Boxer, when we all suddenly had Pro Tools at home and we started working separately,” he says. “It wasn’t joyless, but it started to become a more methodical thing. There were hard times for sure. Going into this process, I know I wanted it to feel different. So we set in motion a few things, and I feel like it opened a different world for us.”

I must have missed that for a time they *were* working more separately but now work together again? Anyway, some good confessions from Matt:

For a man with a reputation for being morose, Berninger is self-aware, even self-deprecating. “To be perfectly honest, the songs are already 75% what they are before I do anything to them,” he continues. “Aaron writes most of the music and there’s a lot of sadness and desperation and melancholy in so much of what he sends me, and I’m following his lead most of the time. So I don’t take full responsibility for our band being so miserablist and dark. It’s his frickin’ minor chords!”

Berninger freely admits he had “a chip” on his shoulder from watching other people make it. He missed the Cincinnati heyday, and then he moved to New York and had to watch the Strokes, Interpol and Yeah Yeah Yeahs blow up. “I was always on the outside of a scene looking in,” he says. “Then the Brooklyn thing started and I felt like we were, like, part of that: the Brooklyn scene. You had TV on the Radio, Grizzly Bear, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. That was finally where we were, like, ‘OK, this is the wave I guess we’ll catch.’ Because we missed the other ones!”

But while many of those bands have burned bright and fizzled, the National endure. Part of this is a focused, very conscious determination. About a decade ago, when Boxer came out, Berninger decided to wear collared shirts, suits and smart boots on stage. “I realised I wanted to do this for a long time,” he says. “So I started dressing like an old man, and that means when I do become an old man, people will say, ‘Oh, you haven’t aged at all!’ I remember there was this old photo where I wore a very low V-neck T-shirt, standing in a field of wheat. It was really bad. I thought it was going to be sexy, but I can’t sell that."

i have spoken with him once, don't claim to know him, but he seems like a funny, nice, regular dude. he's definitely more imposter syndrome than tortured genius or whatever.

what, though, is "the Cincinnati heyday"? I don't remember a Cincinnati heyday.

Afghan Whigs?

Ass Ponys?

Yeah ... I guess so. Kinda forgot about that little bubble.