The National’s singer Matt Berninger is musing about being on the road again. The band’s latest tour takes in Europe on the way to Australia for the Sydney Festival. The fivepiece made up of brothers Scott (guitar) and Bryan Devendorf (drums) and Aaron (bass) and Bryce Dessner (guitar), along with Berninger are from Cincinnati, Ohio but met in New York City, where the band formed and then recorded debut The National without having played a gig.
“We had no grand scheme to be a rock n roll band that tours the world. We never expected to flying to Australia for shows, well, maybe in our wildest dreams,” says Berninger. “The birth of band was a two year process. Scott and I had been friends in college and a friend had an 8-track and we started noodling and he called his brother and then Aaron, who called his and it came about almost by accident,” he explains the band’s beginning. “We were listening to our recordings which were only a sketch of an idea, but we realised there was something there that we all fell in love with.”
The result was the band’s debut record The National in 2001, which the band launched live by “playing a couple of open mike nights”. After the band’s follow-up Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers in 2003 and the Cherry Tree EP in 2004 there was a rumble about The National in indie circuits, but it wasn’t until 2005’s Alligator, an album filled with anger and a sense of anxiety the band came to wider attention and a global audience with the single ‘Lit Up’.
Earlier this year the band released Boxer, a much more complete and accomplished record that indicated an acceptance of the world and its flaws, with an almost nostalgic romance about it. “_Boxer_ is more a desperate look at the things the way they are and how to best hold on to things that are important,” explains Berninger. “The love songs aren’t about pining about something gone and it about trying to be a responsible person about the situation.”
He says part of the shift in mood comes from being on the road so with Alligator and wanting to be home and other parts stem from the mood in the US at present. “There’s something escapist and resigned sitting back and letting things or hide some things and something more peaceful about the record… musically and lyrically we were in a quieter place,” he says. This is why the music is meditative, with slow guitar patterns in repeat and lyrics about closing doors and staying inside.
‘”It was like a manta, and was meditative, it just started happening,” he says. “‘Fake Empire’ is about turning your head off for a little bit and that weird disconnect and euphoric state of having a fake mind when you feel the need to escape from thinking about politics and the band. Sometimes it’s an irresponsible thing to do, but the record celebrates the need to unplug.”
Berninger says politics in particular has been “seven years of miserable, depressing stuff”. “The second time Bush won so many people wanted to bury their heads in the sand and go to sleep for four years and wake up when it’s all over,” he says.
To create this escapist mood without the anger, on Boxer orchestration is used differently than in previous albums. “This time we were more picky about how we used it, it wasn’t about layering for effects, for example, the horns are there for a reason, to have a voice and to take the song in a different direction, and it’s the same with the drumming,” he explains. As with previous The National outings, the orchestration is composed by The Clogs’ Padma Newsome, however there are few new faces in the album to in the like of Sufjan Stevens on piano in ‘Ada’ and ‘Racing Like a Pro’ and Carin Besser, Berninger’s wife and a New Yorker writer, as a co-lyricist on some tracks.
“I tend to throw stuff at her when I write and she hears early versions of the songs,” he says. “She has a good ear and we wrote three songs together, she’s both my muse and my editor. When a song is about her she really likes to get into it. She lets the ugly stuff stay in there, she’s very brave—she lets the awkward parts of our relationship go,’ he says. “She also catches me when I’m full of shit. Like when I’m writing a love song and its full of bubblegum, she makes sure I’m not blowing smoke, she keeps me honest.”
Also keeping the band honest is a film by Vincent Moon (Mathieu Saura) called A Skin, a Night, which was filmed during the creation of the album. “The film is about us while we in the middle of making Boxer and some touring, but it’s not quite the making of, it’s a mixture of that and fly on the wall and is due out in a couple of months,” he says.The second single on Boxer is the ‘Killing Moon’-esque ‘Apartment Story’, but Berninger says there Echo and Bunneymen were not one of the inspirations in make-up of the album.
“I used to listen to them a lot a long time ago but not for a while… you’re right but I hadn’t heard that song in a long time, maybe it was lying deep in the unconscious. I would say 90 per cent of what we write would be stolen from somewhere,” he laughs.
Who: The National
When: Monday Jan 12, Tues 22, Weds23
Where: City Recital Hall
With: Clogs
