The National “Sleep Well Beast”
The National have had a pretty great run. For more than a decade now, they’ve been carried on the arms of cheerleaders. Not that they didn’t deserve it. During the five years from “Alligator” through “High Violet” they were practically flawless. For a while, it was hard to even find a dissenting voice. But, they were out there. And I partially understood. There was always something about The National that was trying to have it both ways. Indie darlings and Festival heroes. Alpha men with Beta streaks. Self-loathing but completely self aware. Romantic but also kind of fuck everything. For those three albums, though, The National could have it both ways. In fact, they could have it every way.
As a matter of curiosity, and In spite of my fandom, I would hear out the critics. Some reluctant fans appreciated the band but bemoaned their “sameness.” Others rolled their eyes, confirming my presumption that the band had come to signify an urban, post-modern boys’ club. Carl Wilson wrote a much talked about piece for Slate wherein he exhausted every reasonable and unreasonable critique of The National, only to conclude that his disdain was mostly masochism. He hates in The National what he hates most in himself -- pretension, elitism and smugness. That, of course, I could relate to.
I was not necessarily surprised by those indictments. All reactions get their reactions. In this case, they were opposite, but honestly, not especially equal. The very loud, high minded, celebration of The National could not go unanswered. But, The National was beloved and I was part of the hegemony. I loved their sameness. I happen to think that repetition in music is both aesthetically effective and structurally necessary. Many of my favorite bands get accused of sameness, or worse — schitckiness. But, with The National, I knew that their gimmicks were born from practice and competence. And where others heard monotony, I detected dynamic shifts and minor, but revelatory, change. If you did not like the whiskey and wine in Matt Berninger’s baritone, then you were not going to like The National. But that does not mean that “All the Wine” or “Mr. November” sound like “Terrible Love.” Because, really, they don’t.
In most every superficial way, I’m exactly the wrong guy to be talking about this band. I’m a middle-aged, college-educated, record collecting, white guy. Plus, I’ve already been sold. I completely buy their affect. When I imagine the band recording in the recording studio, it’s nothing short of romantic: Dimly lit, probably past midnight. Bottles and bottles of wine next to iPhones and stained transcription sheets. All of it strewn over Persian rugs. Two sets of brothers and a charismatic, if less musical, front man. Working through things, without saying a whole lot. It’s a very smoky vibe. It’s a very literate vibe. It’s a little stoned and drunk. But heady. It’s the sort of cliche that could reasonably inspire derision. I mean, they’re not The Stones. They’re not Hemingway. They’re not Leonard Cohen. But, to me, they are not that far off, either.
I also lived in New York during The National’s coming of age. At the time, I was running an online record store, based in Brooklyn, that was known for selling heaps of vinyl from Matador, Sub Pop, Merge, Secretly Canadian, and the like. I can clearly recall those weeks in 2006, when we would sell five to ten copies of “Alligator.” And then, I remember those weeks in 2007, when we would sell twenty to thirty copies of “Boxer.” It was like clockwork. The numbers kept growing. Something was happening. And it wasn’t just their albums. Customers were buying their t-shirts and posters in small droves. Around 2009, we started buying a hundred LPs at a time, more than for almost any other band. Then, finally, on the heels of “High Violet,” I just reached out to Matador and asked if we could buy our own run of a thousand records. We’d never done anything like that before. But our math indicated it made sense. And the math was right.
It was a long road from The National’s debut to “High Violet.” In 2001, when Brassland sent me over their promotional CDs, I was not especially interested in whatever was in that pile. I listened to The National quickly and dismissed it as “kind of Tindersticks, kind of Interpol, but without any dynamic.” In my defense, that first record is a more ragged affair. I suspect the band had not figured out their magic tricks yet. That being said, I brought all of the CDs home and noticed that my wife, who loves Classical music, kept playing The Clogs (which made sense) and The National (which made less sense). At the time, I just sort of made a mental note of it and moved on. For my job, I was always searching for something markedly different -- something that we could get behind before everyone else had figured it out. I arrived early to The National, but, in 2001, they sounded kind of familiar. If I needed gothic, intellectual Americana -- which I often did -- I could get something better from Smog or The Silver Jews or Lambchop.
So, years later, when a promotional copy of “Alligator” landed on my desk, I was kind of disinterested. Fortunately for me, my wife was still wholly interested. She’d checked in with “Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers” and asked that I bring the new album home. For the next year, it never left our rotation. It may seem incidental now, but, back then, the leap from “The National” to “Alligator” was breathtaking. There were a bunch of things wrong with their debut, but I always sensed that the songs and the words were not the problem. If pressed, I would have said that the guitars, bass and drums were not strong enough girders for Matt’s voice. And that they lacked a certain dynamic that separates good bands from great ones. Between that album and their sophomore one, though, a whole bunch of shit happens. Post-9/11 happens. The migration out of Manhattan and towards Brooklyn happens. LCD Soundsystem happens. More importantly, Interpol’s “Turn on Your Bright Light” happens. And, Peter Katis, who produced that album, meets The National and agrees to produce what would become “Alligator.”
For the five years that followed “Alligator,” The National could do no wrong. They were new enough to be blessed by Pitchfork but classic enough to be feted by Rolling Stone. They went from playing mostly full, big clubs to selling out multiple nights at venerable theaters. Men would pump their fists to “Mr. November” while women would sway to “Start a War.” And everyone would hold each other tight, close their eyes and sing along when they started into “Fake Empire.” They were quite literally the soundtrack to every white person's cocktail party in Brooklyn for the better part of a decade. When you put on The National in your apartment, you were saying many things. And all of them sounded right.
“High Violet” marked the beginning of one era and the end of another. Commercially, it was a massive success. It reached number three on the American sales charts and was nearly as popular in a dozen other countries. And creatively, it was a total flex. If “Alligator” and “Boxer” shared a black and white vibe, “High Violet” had more color. “Terrible Love” was like modern Gospel. And “Bloodbuzz Ohio” distilled the group’s superpowers into their most essential components -- bass, pulse, repetition, tension and release. It may not be my favorite album by the band, but “High Violet” felt both sturdy in the foundation and expansive in its walls and ceiling. It wasn’t simply brooding, it was searching. And it wasn’t merely poetic, it was lyrical. I was unsure as to how they could improve upon the last three albums or where they would go next. But, I not so secretly hoped that they would stay close to home.
And that’s almost exactly what they did on “Trouble Will Find Me” in 2013. Even for a band that had become renowned for reusing the same basic tropes, The National sounded especially familiar on their fifth album. On the one hand, it had the feel of an easy going, if hard won, victory lap. Most tracks were like a lesser version of the better song from the ones before. But we were all still so high from the last eight years that, at the time, we could barely detect a difference. “I Need My Girl” was so lovely, it ached. “I Should Live in Salt” was like “Terrible Love,” cleaned up and with more strings. Taken together, it was more than just pretty. It was more than competent. It was accomplished. It was nearly an hour long. And for as much as it was described as “relaxed,” it also featured over thirty musicians. The album art was credited to nineteen people. “Trouble Will Find Me” was a production — an occasion. Everything had a smidge more pomp and circumstance. It was as though, on “High Violet,” The National had achieved maximum equity value. On “Trouble Will Find Me” they resembled a derivative asset. To me at least, they sounded marginally “Nationalesque.”
Most of my concerns were barely audible. I may have even been imagining them. And I certainly didn’t talk about them. The National were still aces in my mind. However, as I entered my forties, married, with three children, I couldn’t help but notice that Matt, Aaron and Bryce were starting families as well. I tried to ignore the fears that had crept in from their last album. But, in 2016, when they announced the forthcoming release of “Sleep Well Beast,” it was hard to not wonder -- could they ever get back? Could they ever just be five guys in a band, again? Could they ever make a record that was not an event? Could they be themselves and not who and what they represented? Could they unhear and unsee what they had heard and seen since “Boxer?” Candidly, I was not so sure. In their defense, they still had not yet suffered creatively. At least not in any material way. More than anything, I hoped that the next record would not be desperate. I was all for evolution and trying new things. But desperation -- change under duress -- that would not suit me. I didn’t care that some critics considered The National to be pretentious or melodramatic or self-congratulatory. I dug their grad school, Mad Men, Rock Star, Dad vibes.
In 2017, when the artwork for “Sleep Well Beast” was revealed, I felt some relief, with maybe a twinge of “uh oh.” The photo of Aaron Dessner’s barn slash recording studio was encouraging. It looked like the perfect place for five men to reconvene, with their iPhones, red wine and instruments. It seemed intentionally, almost pornographically, upstate and domestic. It was hard to not think about The Band recording in The Big Pink. Peter Katis, who’d co-produced “Alligator” and “Boxer,” was back in the studio with the band. I hoped for something as alive and dark and yearning as those albums. I was open to some change. But I did not, in any way, need it.
On the other hand, the art and package was also rolled out on a red carpet, along with font and identity standards and a backstory from the renowned design studio, Pentagram. As a snooty admirer of good design myself, and knowing that Matt and Scott once worked in advertising, I recognized the rigor that went into the packaging. Candidly, it was quite beautiful. I was excited to hold a copy of the LP in my hands. However, it was also an early sign that my concerns from “Trouble Will Find Me” might have been founded. That “Sleep Well Beast” was to be an “occasion.” That the wheels were turning at NPR and Pitchfork, readying another coronation. That apartments in Brooklyn and bungalows in Silver Lake were abuzz. That the band was being fitted for bespoke suits as a stylist looked on and gave notes. That, one year into Trump’s presidency, the band would have a lot to say about the state of American politics. That this might be the moment wherein The National eclipsed Radiohead as “The Most Important Rock Band in The World.”
Honestly, I think I would’ve been OK with all of those things. I vicariously enjoyed their success. I even admired their public postures. And they always seemed to have a winking, “we are evolved enough to know that it’s funny that we are Rock stars” air to them. I was OK with the velvet, jade encrusted album jackets. Had no problem with the auto-pilot four and five star reviews. I didn’t mind being part of this patriarchy. What unnerved me was the prospect of desperate change. It’s an inevitable trap of middle age. Perspectives shift from inward to outward. There are partners and children. There’s less time together, inside the band. There are mounting of expectations. There are livelihoods at stake. And there is, of course, the certainty of the backlash: The National are too bougie. Too smarmy. Too samey. My fear was not the opulence of success. It was not the higher stakes. It was not a fear of evolution. It was a fear of desperation.
Deep down, I knew The National were due for a shake up. That “Sleep Well Beast” would be full of inorganic change. Certainly change, in response to the recent presidential election, was to be expected. But, I also anticipated changes designed to dispel accusations of sameness. It’s the trap of middle age. The unnecessary beard. The too expensive car. The Crossfit classes. The new wardrobe that goes well with Crossfit and the expensive car. The showy changes that create more problems than they solve. That was what I was bracing myself for. The National had absolutely nothing to prove. And yet, I sensed that, for their seventh album, the band was preparing a Noble-worthy proof.
“The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness” was the first single released from “Sleep Well Beast.” In May of 2017, still raw from the Presidential election, it felt like a welcome, if wordy, blast from the bunkers. Moreover, it sounded mostly like The National. Given the slight aftertaste of “Trouble Will Find Me,” I was relieved by the familiarity of the new song. The pedal on the lead guitar sounded unnatural and it worked against the tempo. But, I concluded that was mostly my own paranoid nitpicking. It was far better than good enough.
Matt Berninger talked a lot about how this album was about relationships pushed beyond their limits. About the fractures -- large and small, loving and tragic -- that define love (and, I intuited, politics). Based on his descriptions alone, I had no reason for concern. Quite the contrary. By 2017, Berninger was forty six and married with a child. I was just a couple years behind him, a married father of three, and keenly interested in how he and his wife, Carin Besser, would sketch out the scenes. Additionally, The National were not new to politics. They were on President Obama’s radar. They campaigned for Hillary Clinton. They were not musically iconoclastic. But, they never hid from their position. When they first ascended, alongside Obama, there was a lot to be hopeful for. But, I remember that pit in the stomach in the evening between November eighth and ninth in 2016. I remember feeling, alongside the majority of Americans, that the rug had been pulled out from beneath us. I was nervous about a lot of fucking things. The environment. White nationalism. My kids' future. My career. My aging parents. And if I could have written a song or directed a movie that channelled all of that anxiety, I would have. But I don’t have those talents. Surely, though, The National did. And if there was any band that I believed could artfully connect domesticity with domestic terror, it was them. So, while I was certainly anxious in May of 2017, their forthcoming album was more a salve than an irritant.
The National picked their radio singles well. They released four songs before the album arrived in stores and none of them revealed the ways in which “Sleep Well Beast” was at odds with their previous work. When “Sleep Well Beast” finally did make it home, I was sincerely excited and, I thought, sufficiently prepared. As I unwrapped the LP and felt the heft of the paper and the precision of the elaborate design, I was unworried. Yes -- it felt precious. But, also, I liked precious things. As I read the credits, however, a couple of notes stood out. For one, the words were credited to Berninger and Besser, while the music was attributed to the Dessner brothers. On previous albums, I did not recall seeing the lyrics and compositions described separately, as though they were produced by separate organizations. And then, of course, was the long list of players credited. I like Bon Iver and Mouse on Mars a whole lot but I was not sure I wanted them hanging around my guys. To me, the former had lost his sense of melody and structure while the latter never really seemed to care much for such trifling matters. My eyebrows were raised. More troubling were the forty one other musicians credited, most of whom seemed to be working on “audio processing” and “electronic percussion.” I never had an issue with string sections. But I guess I did sometimes consider them to be more decorative than necessary. And I was very open to guest singers in the background. But I preferred Berninger’s voice unadorned. As I got closer to putting the needle down on “Sleep Well Beast,” I started to brace myself for something unlike the singles and unlike previous National records. Nobody likes a bait and switch.
To casual fans. “Sleep Well Beast” might sound exactly like previous efforts by the band. The singer’s vocals and the Tao of Matt and Carin cannot help but dominate the affair. There is a good deal of minor chord repetition, building of tension and cathartic release. But, for longtime fans, this is the album wherein The National were pulled away from the realm of Leonard Cohen and towards the land of Radiohead. Whereas previous releases were destined for clubs and theaters, this was made for outdoor, possibly European, festivals. In music, as in life, I believe in experimentation. But that is not the same thing as loving experimental music. And, at times, “Sleep Well Beast” lands somewhere between Experimental Rock and Contemporary Classical. The result is a mixed bag by a band that, previously, was as consistent as they came. When the album is good, it is singularly insightful and empathetic. Even when it fails, it can be beautiful. But in those many restless, in between moments, it sounds like the singer is struggling to land his words on composition sheets that, purposefully, don’t fit his typewriter.
The album opens plaintively, with “Nobody Else Will Be There,” which, alongside “Guilty Party” and “Carin at the Liquor Store,” make up a trio of well-bred ballads. Each song arrives at a different moment in the love affair. But there are aches of desire and devastation wherever they begin or end. “Carin at the Liquor Store” is the most succinct and naked of the three. There are faint strings and the guitar pedal is novel, but it is otherwise simply piano and longing. “Guilty Party” may be the most relatable track on the album, documenting that moment in a relationship when you realize that there is no coming back. There is no suture and no right or wrong. And the opener contains the wonders of young, hushed, introverted love that Yo La Tengo has made a career with. There are some ambient distractions, even in these spare tunes -- a pitter patter here, beeps and boops there. But they are not enough to distract from the elegance.
Of the rockers, “Turtleneck” and “Day I Die” stand tallest and, in fact, probably outperform “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness.” The former is heavy, agitated and noisy —perhaps the heaviest and noisiest of the band’s career. Within the squalor, though, you can hear each of the instruments in a political battle. It is certainly dissonant and experimental, but it’s also kind of classically Punk Rock in its own way. I don’t think I want a closet full of “Turtlenecks,” but it works, in part, because the band sounds like they are all individually, equally furious. They’re a group. A club. A union. They’re not five men, living separate lives, working on a production.
“Day I Die” is almost the opposite of Punk. It’s an existentially wistful, ready-made anthem, built for arenas and stadiums. Matt lets the words tickle the bottom of his throat, like he’s sipping expensive whiskey. The beat builds. The hook sets. He pleads. But also, you know that he’s poking fun at himself:
Young mothers love me, even ghosts of
Girlfriends call from Cleveland
They will meet me anytime and anywhere
It’s far from their best song, but it’s great nonetheless. It’s an indulgent triumph and has rightfully become a live concert centerpiece. And to me, it is also the most knowing distillation of what the band had become. They were progressive, intellectual Rock stars -- Pitchfork’s more successful answer to Frasier and Niles Crane. And, every time they played this song live, tens of thousands of men and women implicitly celebrated a time in Brooklyn in 2008, when Barrack Obama was President and there was hope and love amid all of humanity’s shittiness and drunkenness.
Even as it succeeds, though, you feel “Sleep Well Beast” creep towards Radiohead. The glitches. The loops. The storm squalls. The ambient noise. The ways in which songs -- even the sturdy ones -- sound as though they are constructed and processed rather than written and performed. Unlike most people, I would have preferred that Radiohead stepped back after “OK Computer” and just made a career in the fertile crescent between that album and “The Bends.” When you can make “Exit Music (For a Film)” and “High and Dry,” I don’t see much reason to press into “Kid A” and “Amnesiac” or “Hail to the Thief.” I know I’m alone on this one. And my point is less that Radiohead squandered something and more that consistent greatness is rarer than brilliant experimentation. Moreover, The National are not Radiohead. They are functionally more limited, if only because of the defining character of their lead singer’s voice. Their music, whether it is fast or slow, spare or luxurious, functions as a bed to the vocals. Too often on “Sleep Well Beast,” the tracks are either competing with or struggling to accommodate the singer. In Radiohead, even when it is at the expense of the song, Thom Yorke can bend or recede. For better more than worse, Matt Berninger’s instrument cannot.
“Walk it Back” and “I’ll Destroy You” are the two moments wherein the lab work noticeably fizzles. The former is both poetic and politically astute. But, without much of a melody, the singer is forced to speak rather than sing his lines. It’s six minutes of broken guitar shards, synth programs and rhythmic trickery. I have no doubt that the ideas contained here are smart. But smart has never been the problem with The National. “I’ll Destroy You” is built on a woodwind loop and drum and bass itch. Matt mumbles through the first verse. He sounds completely broken, until a melody almost appears. But then, a vibraphone drops in. And that sounds broken as well. Because they are so good at building up to big moments, you assume that a song will take shape around the disparate parts. You’re rooting for it because you love the band and because Matt’s words bruise like a real injury. But, the song just keeps falling apart. It’s all storm and stress without the catharsis.
Almost an hour after it begins, “Sleep Well Beast” rounds to its close with the genuinely pretty, but possibly boring, “Dark Side of the Gym.” As a palette cleanser to the more intense or beat-laden tracks, it would suffice. But, since it follows “Guilty Party” and “Carin at the Liquor Store,” it suffers by comparison. The title track then completes the album. It is typically literate, calling back to the party that we ducked out from in the album’s opener and the promise that we will all, one day, fuck things up. It’s equally loving and misanthropic, the sort of thing that reads wonderfully on the page. But the music, full of loops, found sounds and off-tempo or downtempo percussion, makes it hard to feel anything. By the end of the record, I’d grown accustomed to all of the artful agitation. But I cannot say that I enjoyed it any more.
2017 was an unnerving fucking year. It was a fair time to wonder if we had gotten it all wrong. If this was the end. Or, if we could ever go back. That’s the one that lingers. Matt Berninger wonders -- after the hurt and the miscommunication and the disdain -- can we possibly return to that cold, starry, drunk night at the party. The impulse for change and for destruction is so strong. It’s natural to crave what is new and next and, hopefully, better. But I wonder if that urge is as strong as the middle-aged desire to go back. To before all the responsibilities. To before the job became a career. To before The Grammy’s and the Gold Records and the five star reviews and the festival main stage and before the time when everything was a production and when you started hearing whispers that you were losing it or that you may have never had it to begin with. To before all that, when you were five guys, working other jobs, getting drunk, figuring things out, playing clubs, sweating a lot, falling in love with each other, and falling in love with your songs. And being terrified it would end.
On “I’ll Destroy You,” Matt sings, “Nothing I do/Makes me feel different.” On “Walk it Back,” he sings, “Forget it/Nothing I change changes anything.” Those two lines read like the bookends of the experiment that was “Sleep Well Beast.” You cannot tolerate the sameness. You lose perspective. And so, you desperately need to change. But then, tragically, you realize that your experiment failed. Or, rather, your hypothesis was inconclusive. You wound up back where you started. Maybe that’s torture. Or maybe, that’s New York’s house band from 2005, miles away from 2017, on the cusp of hope, feeling all the feelings. And maybe that’s perfect. Maybe we can’t get back. Maybe we have to change. We can’t always be young. Maybe we even have to want to change. But, do we have to need it so fucking badly?