The National: First Two Pages of Frankenstein (digital outlets/vinyl)

 |   |  1 min read

The National: First Two Pages of Frankenstein (digital outlets/vinyl)

Plagued by writers' block, Matt Berninger of the National opened Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein and read of the narrator heading to the North Pole, invigorated by the promise of the journey: “I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquilise the mind as a steady purpose – a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.”

In such words Berninger found his own steady purpose and wrote again. Since touring their 2019 album I Am Easy to Find the five band members – as always – collaborated with other artists or pursued their own directions (soundtracks, orchestral work). All feeding into the new album.

With previous collaborators Phoebe Bridgers (boygenius), Taylor Swift (National's Aaron Dessner produced her Grammy-winning Folklore, its follow-up Evermore and her re-recording of her back-catalogue) and Sufjan Stevens, Frankenstein could have sounded like something built from diverse bits.

But this ninth album is made coherent in a song cycle about break-ups and emotional distance, right from the piano ballad opener Once Upon a Poolside with Stevens (“I thought we could make it through anything”).

The surging energy of Eucalyptus has a separating couple dividing their chattels: “What about the instruments? What about the Cowboy Junkies?” and on the acoustic-framed folk-rock of New Order T-Shirt we hear, “I keep what I can of you, split-second glimpses and snapshots and sounds”.

If the devil's in the details, the National explore the minutiae of relationships beyond life's surface noise to find uncomfortable truths: “Something somehow has you rapidly improving, what happened to the wavelength we were on?” (the momentum-pop of Tropic Morning News).

With passages of Paul Simon's lyrical precision flowing into Scenes from a Marriage and an enervating episode of Friends, the National dissect difficult adult issues, pick at the scabs, but reserve a suggestion of positivity for the final Wilco-like Send For Me.

Elegantly delivered despondency.

.

You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

Kanye West, 808s and Heartbreak (RocAFella)

Kanye West, 808s and Heartbreak (RocAFella)

Because I don't listen to much of the over-produced, schmaltzy, ululating music that passes for r'n'b these days (in my old-fashioned definition I still link r'n'b to the soul of Otis, Sam Cooke... > Read more

JessB: Feels Like Home (digital outlets)

JessB: Feels Like Home (digital outlets)

It is perhaps unusual and maybe even unseemly that a man of a certain age (plus a decade or more) should be so taken with a young woman rapper. But from the first... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

THE BARGAIN BUY: Various Artists; New Orleans. Blues, soul and jazz gumbo

THE BARGAIN BUY: Various Artists; New Orleans. Blues, soul and jazz gumbo

When New Orleans -- aka The Big Easy, The City That Care Forgot -- became the very big uneasy and the city the administration forgot in the wake of Katrina and the flooding, many people around the... > Read more

QUENTIN TARANTINO: The director defining the landscape

QUENTIN TARANTINO: The director defining the landscape

There was a scene in Michael Palin’s much acclaimed travel-doco Himalaya which, even if you didn't see it, you'll recognise. It was of a towering mountain with clouds scuttling over at about... > Read more