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

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?

sometimes they achieve this effect through abstraction more than detail but they do both cf. "am i the one you think about / when you're sitting in your fainting chair drinking pink rabbits" "i'm so surprised you want to dance with me now / i was just getting used to living life without you around"

xp

and the hip are a bad comparison, downie was leagues ahead of either berninger as a lyricist but he was leagues ahead of fuckin everybody on earth. the hip were a bar band with a poet for a frontman, the national are an indie rock band whose songs are like turning musical box constructions with a depressive but often funny and un-self-serious frontman

both bands share a lot of qualities with r.e.m., though

Berninger does have a lyrical tic that tends toward tautology, for lack of a better word. Like (paraphrasing) "I owe money to the money to the money I owe" or "I'm too tired to talk about talking about being tired" or whatever. But I think those turnarounds are also kind of funny.

I call that move the Woomble.

Antimetaboles gone awry. On account of the drinking, no doubt.

I learned a new word!

I'm a big fan of "I better get my shit together, better gather my shit."

I brought up The Hip because I have indeed felt comfortable and happy watching dad rock as a member of an almost-entirely white audience. There are more differences between both bands, though.

I was thinking about the projections, which indeed were just solid colours following titles for each song. Could've been a lateral Jarman reference? I know The National enjoy their avant-garde references. But the entire projection affair created a metaphor for the music below... high production values, enormous numbers of personnel onstage, expensive gear, undeniable individual musical facility with every participant, but a result that was, save for Berninger's vocals featureless. When one of the Dessner's took a rare solo, or the trumpet player did a thing, it was such a contrast to everything else that was going on onstage. It's not groovy enough to enjoy the band settling it, it's not harmonically interesting enough to feel as if any individual song was necessary, the strings and brass generally didn't do more than hold down pads to what was going on. I like boring music, I like dad music, I like all the components that make up this band, but the sensation was one, specifically, of featurelessness, and the excitement and appreciation of the performance in the crowd was undeniable, and here I am trying to unpack why the hell this band is more (globally) successful and critically revered than The Hip were, for example.

Also I don't deny that Berninger has his moments, lyrically. I scan his lyric sheets and think "that is nice" as often as "I don't have any idea what that means and neither does anybody else, I suspect". There is an appreciation I have for the way the band has branded themselves, naming their website after an old song (American Mary), naming their online community after an old album (Cherry Tree). There is a repetition of tropes: a man pinning flowers on a woman, hold my drink, a blue ribbon, a red ribbon, another drink, a reference to a place, a reference to a time of day, my mind is hazy, and so on. Every band has a novelty song that becomes a hit but Berninger are too focused on existing within this particular narrow lane of banality that there is no room for novelty, beyond, I guess, "Mr. November" (because it contains the word "fuck").

The representation of alcohol both within the band's lyrics and their onstage presence is something I find disconcerting more than appealing, not because I'm clutching pearls about it, but because it feels demonstrative and exaggerated, but it doesn't make me feel entertained, it just makes me feel uncomfortable, as it would seeing somebody get too drunk at a party.

I do like the tautologies that Berninger writes. I tried to put on "Boxer" this morning to see if "hearing the studio recordings" would clear my head and reset me back into casual fandom, but I scanned down the list of songs and realized I didn't want to hear any of them. I am very confused about this band. I am feeling this morning like it is some kind of trick. Some kind of capitalist trick. An accident of a lot of money being spent on gear and alcohol, a lot of accumulation of power and personnel. And people enjoying the music is an accident, too. It feels like a hiccup. I understand the appeal of 95% of the music out there but The National still confuse me.

R.E.M. are another such band that confuse me. I don't understand what Michael Stipe is doing.

Like, aside from showing up and getting paid, that is

That explains a lot.

Oh no, I like R.E.M., but I don't understand what Harborcoat is about, neither do you, and neither does Michael Stipe

And… that's totally fine? Enigmas in art seem to be a dealbreaker for you (which isn't to say I find The National particularly enigmatic).

most live music is bad in the wrong mood or state of mind. sometimes the feeling sticks with you. you are not a recently awoke observer of a capitalist brainwashing conspiracy. maybe, for example, you were just feeling self-conscious about the date you planned.

The representation of alcohol both within the band's lyrics and their onstage presence is something I find disconcerting more than appealing, not because I'm clutching pearls about it, but because it feels demonstrative and exaggerated, but it doesn't make me feel entertained, it just makes me feel uncomfortable, as it would seeing somebody get too drunk at a party.

Interesting digression imo. Like, Eddie Vedder used to go through a bottle of wine over a night, but he seems to have stopped, and PJ music doesn't really reference alcohol. But a year or two back my friend took me to see the Old 97s (I was never really a fan), and almost every song seemed to be about drinking, yet the band had nothing harder than bottled water on stage, which I found ... weird. Drive-By Truckers used to pass a bottle of Jack Daniels around, but they seem to have stopped (as the shows got longer and they got older? also ... dealt with substance abuse/drinking problems, iirc?). Berninger, fwiw, supposedly suffers from some degree of stage-fright, at the least. I looked back on something I wrote here about the doc made about his brother, and at least at the time (I only saw it that once) I wrote that it implied he and his brother both share some degree or reliance on alcohol. I know Berninger has said drinking (and pot) has played a big role in his lyric writing. Don't know if that is still the case.

dave matthews eats a whole roast on stage when performing 'too much'

I've definitely become highly attuned to just how pro every band seems to be these days, with static setlists and strict musical cues and a general adherence to rigid song structures and arrangements. I don't know how much that has to do with capitalist brainwashing, more like big audiences that deserve better than a band fucking around/up? I also read that Berninger now has a teleprompter, which supposedly helps him with his stage fright. But it did make me consider that literally every single arena show I see enlists a teleprompter, and never/rarely smaller shows, and I think it's less that those smaller acts have easier to remember lyrics and more that, yeah, there might be more wiggle room to forget than in a less forgiving huge-venue environment.