I spent a long time waiting for this gig to take off, but eventually realised that it wasn’t going to happen. To begin with I thought the band were just pacing themselves, playing a slow-burning set that would eventually explode into life, opening with the modest thrum of “The Runaway”, and following it with the similarly restrained “Anyone’s Ghost” and “Mistaken for Strangers”. But in the end, although The National moved up through the gears and finished the show with a big warm finale, still, it all seemed a bit flat.
The chief problem from what I could discern was that singer Matt Berninger was out of sorts. Repeatedly between songs he gestured at the sound engineers at the side of the stage, or walked off looking agitated to converse with them; he seemed to be having problems with the sound levels in his monitors. He was distracted, he bickered with his bandmates and constantly interrupted them.
As the show progressed the tension between band members – or rather between Berninger (pictured right) and the rest of the band - became palpable, and it wasn’t the kind of tension that fuels a performance. Berninger is a singer who feeds off the energy of his bandmates, and they in turn need something from him; here, that symbiosis was lacking. With nothing to fuel him, Berninger looked lost; and without their talisman, they too were all at sea. All of which was a shame because having seen their storming, swirling set at Latitude in the summer I was relishing the chance to see them do the same again – there was a sense of drama in that performance that bordered on hysteria.
Indeed, Latitude was my first live experience of a band who have been around for more than a decade. Cincinatti-born and Brooklyn-based, The National make music that resonates powerfully with the current 1980s vibe: the doomy baritone voice of Berninger, reminiscent of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis; thumpy-jumpy drums on which tom-toms rather than the snare are prominent; a mood of sombre introspection. It’s music that creeps up on you rather than grabbing you by the throat, and on stage at its best it has a sort of dark magnificence, enhanced by the often cryptic and impressionistic lyrics such as those in "Bloodbuzz Ohio", from their recent High Violet album: “I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees”.
Here, though, the darkness wasn’t dark enough, and Berninger just seemed sulky rather than impassioned. I guess it must be hard to deliver the kind of half-demented performance he’s capable of giving, night after night; and while it’s a shame that those who had paid good money for their tickets should have had to experience a below-par performance, it’s surely preferable this way than to have a band of automatons, cranking out the same show, on demand.
Anyway, if I’m making this all sound like some kind of disaster, it wasn’t. They played well enough, Berninger’s voice was fine (though he drifted a little off key in “Conversation 16”, perhaps as a result of his monitoring difficulties), and there was a constant stream of distractingly jittery images projected on the screen behind them.
Towards the end Berninger went walkabout, trailing his extraordinarily long microphone lead behind him as he ploughed through the crowd, this way and that, like a dog in long grass. It seemed to galvanise him, and the next song, "Terrible Love", was resultingly impressive. Finally there was a wholly acoustic, entirely unamplified rendition of “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks”; a song of absolute quietness got the biggest cheer of the night, and the show ended on a high note. But I have no doubt that strong words were spoken in the band’s dressing room afterwards.
- The National play Brixton Academy on November 30 and December 1
- Find The National on Amazon
Watch The National's "Bloodbuzz Ohio" video:
