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THE NATIONAL<\/h1>\nTHE NATIONAL<\/h1>\nCollecting critical raves and fans the old-fashioned way\u2014one at a time\u00a0 \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
They\u2019re no overnight sensation, but over the course of nearly 15 years and a half-dozen albums, New York indie-rockers the National have reached impressive critical and commercial heights. As they play high-profile slots at Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza this summer and release their latest album, Trouble Will Find Me<\/i>, the group acknowledges that slow and steady has been key to their success.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that there wasn\u2019t a whole lot of attention at the beginning was helpful for us to figure out how to be a band,\u201d says singer and lyricist Matt Berninger. \u201cAlso we know how hard it is to get any attention, to win people over one at a time, so we don\u2019t take it for granted now that 15,000 people are coming to our shows. We\u2019re well aware how lucky we are, and we\u2019re grateful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Featuring guest spots from Sufjan Stevens, Sharon Van Etten and Annie Clark (St. Vincent), Trouble Will Find Me<\/i> is the follow-up to the National\u2019s 2010 album,\u00a0High Violet<\/i>, their most successful release so far. The band (which uniquely includes two sets of brothers\u2014bassist Scott and drummer Bryan Devendorf, and twin guitarists Aaron and Bryce Dessner) found that album\u2019s success relieved some of the pressure when they began writing new songs. Says Berninger, \u201cWe ended up working harder and spending more time on this record, but for me particularly, I was in a very peaceful place about it.\u201d Berninger gave us his take on the band\u2019s road to success, and its penchant for darkness and humor.<\/p>\n
Did you ever expect great success?<\/b><\/p>\n
No, we didn\u2019t expect it. We didn\u2019t think much about it, though. For us, the band started\u00a0in a way that was a fun respite from our\u00a0day jobs, and playing Mercury Lounge,\u00a0which holds 250 people, was for us a huge, huge step. That\u2019s when we knew we were a real band. The past 14 years as it slowly grew, it\u2019s been a strange metamorphosis. There was never a moment when things changed and blew up overnight for us, it just kept growing bigger and bigger.\u00a0We figured out how to be a good live band. And we figured out how to write songs and make records together, definitely \u00a0in the shadows.<\/p>\n
Why was it easier to write this time?<\/b><\/p>\n
Alligator<\/i> was the first record we released that was signed to a real label. We were desperate for people to notice us, and they did. But we had a lot of anxiety about how to follow that up without painting ourselves into a corner. We knew we wanted to make something that wasn\u2019t like Alligator<\/i>, but we didn\u2019t want to lose what little attention we had gained. We made Boxer<\/i> work by expanding our style and not repeating ourselves\u2014which was the smartest gamble we ever made. Then with High Violet<\/i>, it was like, OK, we\u2019re in the game now, so let\u2019s deliver something weird that doesn\u2019t sound like the records before it. After touring High Violet<\/i>, we felt we\u2019d planted our flag. It wasn\u2019t like we could relax\u2014it was more that we can be whatever kind of band, and write whatever kind of songs, we want. When I was writing for the new album, I wasn\u2019t worried about how the record was going to be perceived. I was just writing lyrics without putting it through any kind of self-conscious filters. In a funny way, taking the pressure off the band to be successful made it easier to write songs.<\/p>\n
How have your songs\u2019 themes and subject matter evolved over the years?<\/b><\/p>\n
I bet I\u2019m writing about some of the same things I was then. I know Alligator <\/i>was a bitter, angry record in a lot of spots. There were parts of that record that were tense, and some of that\u2019s gone. But my preoccupation\u2014social anxiety, the anxiety of trying to be an adult and husband and father, and the anxiety of trying not to be a fool in your life\u2014constantly drives the songs. It\u2019s always there. I\u2019m a romantic and I write about the murkier sides of romantic relationships. Not necessarily darker, but complicated. Being married is complicated. Being an adult is complicated. It\u2019s not like a switch flips and suddenly you\u2019re all straightened out. Everybody stays a bit like a twisted, crooked, glued-together pretzel their whole life\u2014and it\u2019s about figuring out how to be responsible, and stay good and kind to the people around you and not be selfish.<\/p>\n
Does the band get credit for the depth of humor explored in your songs?<\/b><\/p>\n
(Laughs<\/i>) I definitely think the songs have as many funny moments as they do brooding. It\u2019s a balance. But for me to say I don\u2019t think people get our humor as much as they should just means that I\u2019m not as funny as I think I am. When people listen to us more, and closer and repeatedly, the different dimensions of our songs reveal themselves. I get why people label us dark or brooding or depressing. It\u2019s the most obvious thing when you first hear us because of the sound of my voice or the instrumentation we\u2019re using. And when I\u2019m writing I definitely like to wallow in the dark stuff, but often it\u2019s also very silly observations about my own neuroses or obsessions. A lot of our songs are about death and the idea of existence, but in kind of funny ways. The song \u201cHumiliation,\u201d I think, is really funny, and so is \u201cGraceless.\u201d<\/p>\n
Did the band work out specific parts for the guests on the new record?<\/b><\/p>\n
We have friends who are always around, and they come in and just weave their own ideas into our things. With us, it\u2019s never a matter of having a guest cameo. On this record, Sufjan Stevens, Richard Reed Parry, Sharon Van Etten and Annie Clark are on it\u2014they\u2019re doing things, improvising in a way that colors the music. Nona Marie Invie from Dark Dark Dark has a moment where she\u2019s on her own on \u201cThis Is the Last Time.\u201d That was one spot where I needed someone to sing because it sounded too weird to have me overlapping myself, and it needed to be a different person. But on \u201cHumiliation,\u201d I talked to Annie and said, \u201cOur voices will be mixed together in a weird way.\u201d I wanted it to sound like what would be on the radio in the afterlife, and she got into that. Our voices are kind of distorted and mutated into some weird hybrid creation in that section. But it\u2019s not like, \u201cHere\u2019s Annie Clark in her starring cameo!\u201d People prefer that way because they know they\u2019re not just being used for their name; it\u2019s because we respect their musicality,\u00a0and they\u2019re friends.<\/p>\n
When you reference Let It Be<\/i> on \u201cDon\u2019t Swallow the Cap,\u201d are you talking about the Beatles or the Replacements?<\/b><\/p>\n
On \u201cIf you want to see me cry \/ Play Let It Be<\/i> or Nevermind<\/i>\u201d? In a funny way, it could be either one, because all three of those records have a darkness and a sadness attached to them. Members of all those bands died. Part of the reason I chose that was because of the rhythm of the titles, but if I had to say which Let It Be<\/i> has more of a place in my brain, it\u2019s the Replacements\u2019. I\u2019ve listened to their Let It Be<\/i> far more often than the Beatles\u2019, though I love\u00a0both of those records.<\/p>\n
\u2013Eric R. Danton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE NATIONAL Collecting critical raves and fans the old-fashioned way\u2014one at a time\u00a0 \u00a0 They\u2019re no overnight sensation, but over the course of nearly 15 years and a half-dozen albums, New York indie-rockers the National have reached impressive critical and commercial heights. As they play high-profile slots at Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza this summer and release […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,7],"tags":[907,6978,6970],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10749"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10751,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10749\/revisions\/10751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}