Graham Reid | | 1 min read
Plagued by writers' block, Matt Berninger of the National opened Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein and read of the narrator heading to the North Pole, invigorated by the promise of the journey: “I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquilise the mind as a steady purpose – a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.”
In such words Berninger found his own steady purpose and wrote again. Since touring their 2019 album I Am Easy to Find the five band members – as always – collaborated with other artists or pursued their own directions (soundtracks, orchestral work). All feeding into the new album.
With previous collaborators Phoebe Bridgers (boygenius), Taylor Swift (National's Aaron Dessner produced her Grammy-winning Folklore, its follow-up Evermore and her re-recording of her back-catalogue) and Sufjan Stevens, Frankenstein could have sounded like something built from diverse bits.
But this ninth album is made coherent in a song cycle about break-ups and emotional distance, right from the piano ballad opener Once Upon a Poolside with Stevens (“I thought we could make it through anything”).
The surging energy of Eucalyptus has a separating couple dividing their chattels: “What about the instruments? What about the Cowboy Junkies?” and on the acoustic-framed folk-rock of New Order T-Shirt we hear, “I keep what I can of you, split-second glimpses and snapshots and sounds”.
If the devil's in the details, the National explore the minutiae of relationships beyond life's surface noise to find uncomfortable truths: “Something somehow has you rapidly improving, what happened to the wavelength we were on?” (the momentum-pop of Tropic Morning News).
With passages of Paul Simon's lyrical precision flowing into Scenes from a Marriage and an enervating episode of Friends, the National dissect difficult adult issues, pick at the scabs, but reserve a suggestion of positivity for the final Wilco-like Send For Me.
Elegantly delivered despondency.
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here
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