The National - Sleep Well Beast (Sept. 8th, 2017) Anticipation Thread

You can also do things to make a single insane guitar sound good in the mix, but you might need something better than a demo-quality recording.

Kevin Shields on Loomer guitar sound: "It's definitely one of the few stereo guitar tracks. There's no effect on that one, it's basically just the straight guitar sound. It sounds unusual because it was a Strat neck and a Jaguar body with EMG pickups in it. It was just a weird monstrous thing. It had a slightly harder, more midrange-y than a Jaguar/Jazzmaster. It's a lot more high frequency, strange sound. We used partly the sound of the guitar plugged straight into the desk and mixed in slightly and that's got something going on in the high end. But when we mixed it, what gives it a lot of its sound is that it's so heavily compressed with the drums that it sounds like a train. In fact, that was the sound we were trying to get at, like it sounds like you're on a train or something."

It sounds like they were working with 3 tracks, one of which was much brighter, to make that work.

I suppose it's probably 2 tracks: one the insane low-mid-rangey, sounds-like-a-train and blends with the drums and the other the brighter straight-into-the-desk track that could be an entirely different instrument.

to complete my five postagraph essay, i'll note that falling in love with a worse demo is a pretty human and forgivable thing. most of ilx did this with grimes' realiti after all.

i mean it's sorta like "turtleneck" on the new record, i get the thought process behind the decision to include it i just extremely disagree with it

what I don't understand is how they didn't get that droning guitar bit right on the alternate version, since they do it fine live

this album is absolutely wonderful, probably about as good as I could have hoped for. Really smart sequencing, with the anthems frontloaded and the somber loner songs tucked away in the back (since it's spread across two LPs you get to choose which vibe you want). I can't stand "Turtleneck" but at least it's tucked away at the end of side 2, so I can just kill the record early.

I'm enjoying it a lot as well, nice to hear them do electric drums and synths

I can't stand "Turtleneck" but at least it's tucked away at the end of side 2, so I can just kill the record early.

Either you or spotify have a copy with the sides mislabelled.

Side 2 of a 4-sided double LP

today i learnt that double lps are still a thing.

literally any album over 46 minutes gets two LPs today and it's v annoying

#1 album in the UK

Wtf?

dunno, why WTF? I saw someone else expressing surprise that this was advertised on the side of a bus. they play festivals and near stadiums at this point. they're quite big. also, considering how few people actually purchase albums now, you see all kinds of weird surprising things in charts. i think Paul Draper's album was top 10.

for sure

Sparks celebrate their first Top 10 in more than 40 years with Hippopotamus at Number 7. It’s the second highest-charting album of the US art-rock duo’s career, behind 1974’s Number 4-peaking Kimono My House.

meanwhile the Top 40 singles chart is utterly devoid of any rock/alt whatsoever in the UK since streaming started to count.

Just never thought they were that big over here to get a Number One album, especially as the #2 new entry by Nothing But Thieves seems to have been advertised everywhere.

But yeah, I guess album sales have dropped off a cliff and I see The Waterboys entered at #8

Anyone going to see them live in London next week?

no point of view or deja

for sure

Sparks celebrate their first Top 10 in more than 40 years with Hippopotamus at Number 7. It’s the second highest-charting album of the US art-rock duo’s career, behind 1974’s Number 4-peaking Kimono My House.

― Number None,

Gary Numan in at number two this week as well. He'll probably be out the top 75 next week.

just realized dark side of the gym is a leonard cohen lyric!

this new one is more of a 'high violet' than a 'trouble will find me'

otm

HV is relatively tight by comparison, this new one is the most in need of ruthless self-editing they've ever been. I miss the economy of the Boxer era material a lot.

Didn’t they say prior to this one that they’d tried to avoid self-editing?

Prefer this to Trouble, but not as good as HV or Boxer for me.

Man, I not only totally forgot about this album, I forgot what it was called and had to look it up just to search for this thread.

well "carin at the liquor store" is still just on the right side of the line between "O Deep Thought, write me a The National song" and "this is the most perfect The National song"

Alligator = Reckoning
Boxer = Document
High Violet = Out of Time
Trouble Will Find Me = Automatic for the People
Sleep Well Beast = Monster

Dark Side of the Gym gets its own video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ICyy1V6n4c

This record has aged really well for me. The vaguely electronic production, which sometimes sounded silly and distracting to me on first listen, nicely binds the album and distinguishes it from the previous ones. Even the songs at the end that sound like they were written for Trouble Will Find Me have their own character.

Yeah, it's def a good album

yup. i expected it to grow and it really has. saw them a couple nights ago and they're playing a new one (Light Years) that slays...

https://youtu.be/ugRw7GFcu3w?t=1h20m52s

saw them last night in Berkeley and it kind of sucked TBH. they played the night before and apparently it went much better so I think they were tired. very low energy show. also was annoyed that I went last night to see Cat Power and apparently she played right at 6:30; when the show was listed as starting at 7 in some places (and 6:30 on the tickets, which I still assumed was door time).

yeah i was there the night before with Big Thief opening. we knew it was 6:30 start and they went on at 6:45. crazy early but also super nice to get home before midnight on a school night

Caught this tour as well. Was also annoyed by how laid back the whole thing was. It rained last time, and I think that helped.

(I missed Cat power, in case that wasn't clear).

My wife was flying to Philly to visit friends and also to catch the same show tomorrow night and she had an airline fuckup with the plane being taken out of service at SFO this morning just before boarding, and finally had to cancel the entire trip becaues they couldn't get her to Philly in a normal amount of time. She did however see Chan playing with her kid at the airport. Wonder if she's going to make it out there.

i have warmed up to this album too, it's pretty good. i saw them this year as well in a festive environment so i only saw like eight songs. it was great as the bill was filled with all these modern day glow indie bands. When they played it felt like a goth band compared to all the other BS that was going on.

I went to see this band last night.

The projections consisted of a series of full screen colours preceded with the title of the song that the band was playing, one colour per song. There was no other content but the single colour.

Every musician onstage was more than competent. The drummer in particular was extremely compelling.

I had seen this band several times before and found the lead singer to be of middling quality. His schtick suits him better as he ages. After the show, somebody referred to him as a dad role model and I said “he shouldn’t be drinking whiskey onstage then, he should be bbq’ing.” We then talked about how The National were fans of The Dead and how The Dead were all about onstage bbq.

There were nineteen musicians onstage all told and, basically, I have never heard a set of more featureless music. All chords were root position, all string arrangements were pads with no variation. All lyrics were complete nothing banal nothingness.

I am not familiar with the new album or “Sleep Well Beast” but as I watched I started thinking about lyrics of theirs I could recall. I remembered seeing a roomful of people screaming “I’ll explain everything to the geeks!!!” and feeling like the lyrics was so cryptic that it became meaningless.

There was one black person at the show, my date. I started to wonder, like, is this music good? I remember really enjoying “Boxer”. I googled the band while the concert went on and saw that the band was not just “good”, but “great”; that their previous album had won critical acclaim and a Grammy.

The show ended and everybody got up and gave a standing ovation. I thought to myself, “maybe white people take comfort in things that are featureless.”

In the car on the way home, The Hip came on, who I’ve always thought of as “The better version of The National”. Ironically, every member of The National is a more proficient musician than any member of The Hip, but this featurelessness, this nothingness. What is its appeal? Why do people enjoy music that is this static?

The band started their encore with a song with a long title, the first single from Sleep Well Beast, it was a good song and I enjoyed it.

Then they played Fake Empire and I texted my friend “I’m half awake at a fake rock show”

thanks for the thesis

I love the National but tbh I would never think to see them live post-Boxer - they're 100% a studio band to me.

Really makes you think.

They're a moody chamber rock act. They've been like that for years and years. Not sure what to make of all these people saying they were fans of Boxer but nothing else, or would not see them live after Boxer. What's changed?

Who were all of the extra musicians, just strings and horns?

Also, all this weird misplaced criticisms of their singer as somehow more of a dad than any other dad in rock and roll. (hint: there are lots of them) Is it because he wears glasses now?

I love the National but tbh I would never think to see them live post-Boxer - they're 100% a studio band to me.

― Simon H., Thursday, April 25, 2019 7:33 AM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they're still really good, the way they play the sleep well beast tracks live ("walk it back" especially) convinced me of that record's quality. they hold together a lot of moving parts

They're a moody chamber rock act.

They are a remarkably featureless moody chamber rock act! When that trumpet solo entered in at the end of "Fake Empire" I was like.. OK, here's some content, finally. I'm also very into "low content" music generally, but there's something strange about The National that I can only say is "featureless"... coupled, generally, with lyrics that are interesting combinations of words that don't seem to mean anything

There was the five core band members, a second drummer, a second other dude kind of behind him, two backup singers, Leslie Feist on some songs, Ben and Kyle (their standard brass players), and a six piece string section. That makes 18. Maybe I accidentally counted a tech when I was tallying them up

I am actually here to argue that they are in fact actually really bad and serve as comfort food for people with low standards

Ha, not only does comfort food for people with low standards describe most music, but it would make a great album title!

New board description as well.

Should also say that while I respect they might not be any one person's thing, or overrated, to cite the National as particularly bad music for people with low standards might indicate standards that are far too high!

lyrics that are interesting combinations of words that don't seem to mean anything

lyrics of "fake empire" are particularly straightforward, most national songs are about feeling alone and uncomfortable in your skin and noticing an unbridgeable distance between yourself and others, plus alcoholism, afaict, not hard to grasp

I also think the banalities of his lyrics are not only intentional but highlights! BTW, xpost, the Hip? Do you mean ... The Tragically Hip?