In many ways, The National aren’t together. These days they’re all over the place, both physically – with home bases in various parts of the US and Europe – and creatively.
As they release their ninth album, Aaron Dessner is getting more attention as a principal collaborator with Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran. Meanwhile his twin brother Bryce has been composing classical music and film scores, working with members of Radiohead and taking up a role as artist-in-residence at a Yale University arts centre.
While that pair have been writing at pace, singer Matt Berninger struggled. Since The National were last together he did make a solo album, Serpentine Prison, but also endured a long spell of depression and writer’s block. “I hadn’t felt this sad since I was a little kid,” he said. “I didn’t want to go out of the house.” He has admitted that he felt like the band had finally come to an end.
The esoteric title of this album comes from a trick Berninger used to break the deadlock: reading a random book from his shelves to put some words into his head. Frankenstein begins in the icy wastes of the North Pole, and it’s not surprising that when the lyrics started to come, they were as bleak as Berninger has ever been.
He addresses his faltering mental health directly on Your Mind is Not Your Friend, one of two songs on which Phoebe Bridgers provides guest vocals. On New Order T-shirt, a list of fascinatingly specific memories delivered over plucked acoustic guitar, he sings “I think I’m finally going crazy for real.” Eucalyptus sounds like a couple (or a band) deciding how to divide their possessions before a permanent split: “You should take it, I’m only gonna break it.”
Even so, the Dessners’ shifting sonic textures can’t help but bring some warmth to the room, and things gradually start to look up a bit. On The Alcott, Berninger trades lines with Taylor Swift on a gentle tale of falling back in love.
Tropic Morning News, one of several songs recorded partly live on stage, has an electric energy that the band seems to reach for less and less in its maturity. Finally, in Send For Me, they deliver a heartbreakingly tender song about looking out for others. It’s a powerful reason to feel hopeful that this is far from the end for this special group.
