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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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The National : Big City Sinners
Thursday 04 September @ 14:57:30 |
 by Sean McCarthy
The new album from The National, Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers, is a crowded landscape of displaced sexual deviants and lonesome women. So who knows what sordid escapades frontman and Brooklyn resident Matt Berninger was up to during the recent blackout in New York City. Back-alley threesomes with lost soccer moms? A midnight rendezvous with a long-forgotten ex-girlfriend?
"Actually, I missed the whole thing," Berninger admitted via telephone while taking a break from recording a new song for an upcoming single. "All of my friends were out walking around and drinking and I was stuck in New Jersey at a Holiday Inn watching DirecTV."
Originally hailing from the Midwestern mecca of Cincinnati, The National—Berninger plus the brothers Dessner and Devendorf—relocated to the East Coast five years ago. Compared to the younger generation of NYC bands, The National have been around for ages in pop music years. It makes sense, then, that their sound draws more inspiration from Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave than early ’90s MTV videos. Berninger's voice recalls the smoky drawl of Cohen or Tom Waits (a remarkable feat, considering his nonchalant cadence was achieved without decades of smoking cigarettes and hard drinking).
Berninger's distinct vocals are put to good use on Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers, the follow-up to their self-titled 2001 debut. The band covers a lot of ground—meandering through solemn ballads, dive bar noir gems and wholesome Americana replete with a wailing string section (and that's only the first three songs). One explanation for the multitude of styles on the album is that it took several trips to the recording studio to complete. "We were all working and living in different places,” said Berninger, “so we wound up recording at seven or eight different places. We ended up with all different angles and approaches."
While many of the songs on SSFDL have a real bounce to them, there's always a darker lyrical undercurrent lurking somewhere in the melody. It's truly haunting to hear Beringer coolly croon "You just made yourself available" while detailing a failed relationship on "Available." That's part of the fun of The National—it's impossible to tell what to expect from the opening chords of a song. "They're wretched songs," explains Berninger. "But on the surface they could be a candy bar commercial. That's what makes it colorful and exciting."
The many morose characters that populate SSFDL are connected solely by their discontent; horny trophy wives, jealous ex-boyfriends and jaded lovers who have long since seen the prime of their youth but can’t stop grasping for past sensations. "It's a lot of fiction, from a lyrical perspective," explained Berninger. "It's stuff I already think I know about—maybe it's fantasy, maybe it's stuff I'm trying to get off my chest. It could be real."
It's this thread of men and women and their assorted sordid relationships that makes the album a cohesive listening experience despite veering from rainy day folk balladry ("Lucky You") to bristling rock ("Available"). "The lyrical subject matter wasn't really premeditated," claims Berninger, "as much as those are just the things that are on my mind. Relationships to wives and parents—and not just mine personally—seem to have the most gravity to them. Most of the relationships are part of a song, it all comes down to who we love or who we hate."
The National also manage to interject a healthy dose of droll cynicism and incisive national commentary into the otherwise inward-looking Casanova lyrical mix. There's a gem of a line on the album's poppiest number, "Fashion Coat" : "I'm not stupid, I swear/ I read the foreign news to understand my nation/ You get two options in the US States/ Black city bloodbath or white country rape." It's the kind of comment that wouldn't seem out of place in a Leftist media studies textbook yet somehow fits in comfortably alongside the rest of the songs narrative about a newly single man adrift in New York City.
Having already toured Europe twice (including a stint opening up for Low that saw them playing before hundreds in a Parisian theatre), The National are about to embark on their first substantial American tour. Playing live was originally something of a challenge for the band, according to Berninger; the band leisurely recorded its first album in friends’ basements without ever playing a show. SSFDL brings in some of the dynamics that The National picked up from playing live and, as a result, is a considerably flashier endeavor than its low-key predecessor. "We've been playing live a lot recently," explains Berninger. "And what we've been doing has been exciting. There's screaming and a release of tension that just wasn't on the first album. The newer recordings are a lot looser, in a good way. We recorded a couple of songs after only the first or second take. We're in a big growth stage and we feel the confidence to avoid tweaking the results we’re getting."
The National play Sun., Sept. 7 at the 7th St. Entry with Signal & Report and The Standard. 9 p.m. $5. 21+. 701 First Ave N., Mpls. 612-338-8388.
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