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“Alcoholic! Messiah! Alcoholic! Messiah!” Le Tigre’s lyrics about filmmaker John Cassavetes pretty much sum up my oscillating feelings about the National’s Matt Berninger. His boozy hypnotic lyrics have been swirling around in my brain for over a decade; his own voice often sounds half-submerged, like the circling current is pulling him inexorably down the drain. And yet I feel elevated every time a new album comes out, lifted to new levels of appreciation for a band that continues to confound. I keep waiting for this band to suck. They keep defying my expectations, most notably on “Sleep Well Beast.”
I feel like I’ve been raised on The National, or at least nursed through adulthood by them. I first heard them on a barista’s coffeeshop playlist a good eleven years ago, and I needed to know who they were; soon I was seeing them play small shows at the likes of the Metro. And after seeing Berninger’s inimitably odd onstage energy, I really became an apostle, preaching their virtues to anyone who was even halfway listening. (I can’t describe it, I’d tell people. He’s like an autistic robot. You just have to go see it.) And yet there’s always been a dark air of doubt hovering about my rock-steady faith; I’ve never turned Judas, but I might be Peter or Thomas at least, ready to deny him at the first hint of danger, or to cast doubt on every implausible reappearance until I hear it with my own ears. (“Jumping the shark” may be a phrase that’s jumped the shark, but it comes to mind. Matt Berninger feels like my own personal Jesus, but I keep looking for evidence he’s something else, not walking on water but being pulled inexorably across it, another Fonzie on waterskis heading for the ramp.)
I thought that moment had arrived on "High Violet" when I first heard “Lemon World.” It thought it had arrived for sure during the first few spins through "Trouble Will Find Me," when it seemed a little samey-samey. I thought it was here for sure for sure FOR SURE when I heard “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness” on YouTube and it sounded kinda meh. And I really thought it was absolutely positively irredeemably here the first time I listened to this whole album and heard the weird disjointed bland vocals of “Walk it Back” and what sounds like a sloppy catastrophe on “Turtleneck.”
And yet every true Nationalist knows you really can’t render a definitive verdict on anything "Alligator" and after until at least 20 listens. And so it goes here. It wasn’t until a week or two after I purchased it that I started really getting into it. I’ve said it before, but the band’s like looking at the night ocean under bright moonlight; there are weird little details that emerge out of nowhere, and an overall energy that’s calmly compelling. While I wasn’t initially nuts about the odd abbreviated guitar noodlings on the lead single, they do fit, a series of warmups for a crackly energetic Dessner guitar solo that really lights up the song. The propulsive Devendorf drumming and high descending Dessner arpeggios of “Day I Die” are as strong as anything they’ve written. “Born to Beg” is a beautiful sleeper that easily passes notice on first listen. And the delicate tinkling piano of “Guilty Party”—evocative of Radiohead for me, at least—is perhaps my favorite sound in music, at least for the moment. Indeed, the songs I liked on first listen are now songs I love, and the songs I hated are now calling me back. One wonders again how long it can last—“It all catches up with me all the time,” Berninger declares on “Guilty Party,” and it isn’t hard to imagine all the fun-but-destructive behavior eventually destroying the band, too. But by the time he croons "I’m gonna keep you in love with me for a while,” on “Dark Side of the Gym,” you realize he HAS kept you in love, and you hope against hope that “a while” lasts forever. As has been the case with everything except their debut, there will come a time when you will need to listen to precisely THIS album multiple times in a row--and no other National album, let alone any other album by anyone else, will quite do. So I’m settling in for the night with "Sleep Well Beast," and praying for more to come. As it was since "Alligator," is now and ever shall be, career without end. Amen.
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Reviews with images
The most ambitious, creative, and beautiful National album yet.
I can't believe it's only been a week since LCD Soundsystem released their staggeringly phenomenal album, because I think The National just delivered them the ultimate, "Hold my beer." The National has been one of my favorite bands since the Boxer days, and while Alligator might have been my overall favorite album of theirs, Boxer was always "the" album that all of their releases have been measured against since. I knew something special was brewing with the four singles they dropped throughout the summer, but nothing could prepare me for the musical journey Sleep Well Beast has taken me on. After feeling like they got stuck in a bit of a rut with Trouble Will Find Me, Sleep Well Beast is exactly the album that only my wildest dreams could have hoped for from them, and boy did they deliver. The immense rollercoaster of emotions, textures, layers, and paces throughout the album creates what will likely go down as my favorite album of 2017, and is without a doubt my absolute favorite music from The National of all time.Best Tracks: Day I Die, The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness, I'll Still Destroy You, Guilty Party, Dark Side of the Gym
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