“More off the cuff, more collaborative,” is how Aaron Dessler describes the songs on The National’s surprise 10th album Laugh Track. Dropping just five months after the smart, supportive and slightly soporific Two Pages of Frankenstein, this is an album that apparently saw some of its looser and more upbeat songs growing out of soundcheck jams. “Maybe this is just the funniest version of us/ That we’ve ever been,” sing Matt Berninger and old mucker Phoebe Bridgers on the album’s title track.
Naturally, The National on even their “funniest” form aren’t going to make wedding disco material. But they do sound lighter and more flexible. Longterm fans of the thoughtful indie rockers will enjoy the recovering, rhythmic snap and flex that comes with entrenched sadness shifting out of joints. I was reminded of an old relaxation exercise that asks you to imagine ball bearings settling at the hips and shoulders, then picturing them rolling down the limbs, past knees and elbows and exiting at the fingers and toes. It’s there in the fluid knuckles of the piano, the deep pocket of the drums.
