Brooklyn-based five-piece The National work in 3D – that’s disillusion, dissoluteness and dispiritedness. Wallowing, however, isn’t their way. In fact, there’s a curious euphoria surrounding singer and lyricist Matt Berninger’s laying bare of his foibles and f*ck-ups – if euphoria is quite the right word to describe the pretzel-thin, black-clad dude who fronts like a cross between Robert Forster and a reincarnated Ian Curtis.
Berninger and the two sets of brothers who comprise The National have already carved out quite a niche for themselves on this side of the Atlantic, despite having released just one album to date on a label (Beggar’s Banquet) other than their own – the stellar “Alligator”. They roam similar territory to terminal romantics like The Go-Betweens and Tindersticks, which suggests a European sensibility but fails to particularise them. Also, Berninger’s downbeat, but extraordinarily vivid tales of triumph and failure in bar, boardroom and bedroom owe far more to Americana/urban‘n’western than to any gloomy European romanticism and there’s a crucial, devilish humour in his lyrical poeticism.
They introduce themselves with “All The Wine”, which is as perfect a calling card as you could wish for. Like several of The National’s songs, it combines both the rousing spiritedness of U2/The Waterboys and Springsteen’s virile expansiveness, but without the former’s clifftop bluster or the latter’s self-conscious, everyman shtick. “I’m put together beautifully” are Berninger’s very first words, his lugubrious baritone then proclaiming, “I’m a perfect piece of ass...I’m a festival, I’m a parade...I’m sorry, but the motorcade will have to go around me this time” Laugh? We nearly fell in love.
Their seduction proceeds via a whole series of sonic billets doux: the dramatic, “Transmission”-like “Lit Up”, in which Berninger jerks and twitches his way between drum kit and front of stage, momentarily in some very private place; the gorgeously gloomy, Triffids-toned sashay that is “Baby We’ll Be Fine”, an almost panicky “Mr November” in which Berninger – apparently aware of the burden now on his band’s shoulders – hollers “I’m the new blue blood/I’m the great white hope”; the extraordinarily tender “Secret Meeting” and “Daughters Of The Soho Riots”, a very Cohen-ish confession of male rapaciousness, with a plea for forgiveness at its core.
Their set suggests a brace of potentially uneasy alliances – Joy Division versus U2, The Triffids versus Springsteen – but this band’s talent for aesthetic détente is obvious. The National’s identity is rock (‘n’ roll) solid.
