Gig played on 14/10/05

If you're looking for easy, forgiving realities, look away now. Coldplay would die of fright if they walked in here tonight. The National have no truck with vague, comforting emoting, not when they can veer violently, ecstatically between tormented disaster and epic glory in the space of seconds. That's precisely where The National live and in frontman Matt Berninger, they have an orator of ugly, desperate beauty, who will this evening play the first show of a 30-date European tour as if it's the last night of his life.

Earlier this year, the Brooklyn five-piece released one of the guitar records of the year, the sharp-toothed, fittingly-titled "Alligator". However, acclaim across the smart music press guarantees nothing and although the Komedia is apparently sold-out, it's thin on the ground down here in the trenches. This is no great surprise. You only have to look at the rum sight on-stage to realise The National spend more time nailing their sound - an Americanised collision of Joy Division, The Tindersticks and Camden Monarch sized U2 - than they do pondering which is their best side.

Frankly, they're a shabby collection, a Christmas tree rapidly losing its needles, as the angel on top, Berninger, clings on by his finger-tips. Indeed, survival seems the overwhelming emotion coursing through his veins. A rock'n'roll poet like few currently on the scene, he is a bleeding edge wit capable of making one tawdry step seem like a stride onto the set of a Spielberg blockbuster. "Secret Meeting" sets the tone immediately, Berninger twitching with paranoia as he calls "a secret meeting in the basement of my brain."

Tonight, he just gets better and better. "Serve me the sky with a big slice of lemon" our troubled hero demands on the gently elevating lift of "The Geese Of Beverley Road", while "All The Wine" is a paean to the human spirit charged with gasoline, Berninger implacably stating "sorry, the motorcade will have to go around me this time." "Baby We'll Be Fine", however, is utterly shorn of such sky-high ebullience, crashing through a day that commences in a dream of satisfaction from a dead-end job and ends in a drunken, apologetic mess. "I'm so sorry for everything", Berninger offers his probably rather patient muse.

Thrashing elegantly around this whirlwind of emotion, The National are awe-inspiring when they take on sound, fully flexing their power with the likes of "Murder Me Rachel" and a knockout "Mr November", which floors the crowd five songs in. Amidst a thunderstorm of drums and a dazzling guitar coda, we see Berninger, eyes shut but wild and gripped. "I used to be carried on the arms of cheerleaders", he insists. We can well believe it.

by Ben Gilbert