I started out as a pock-marked hormone-wracked incel with Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson, transitioned to bolshy Britpop in my late teens, gravitated toward icy synth music in early adulthood, and ultimately plateaued at whatever-I-feel-like-listening-to in my 30s. But in recent years, as the vicissitudes of middle age and family life have come to weigh ever more heavily on my puny shoulders, I’ve increasingly sought solace in sad-dad indie rock like the War on Drugs and, above all, the National. The latter articulate my experience with unerring accuracy – the “unmagnificent lives of adults”, the tedious yearning for an earlier state of imagined freedom, the burgeoning physical fragility, the sheer understated banality of it all, even as unending oblivion looms insidiously on the horizon.
But in a most exasperating development, the last few National albums have been shit. This once roguish, sleazy, gin-soaked bunch of mordantly witty and highly literate slipping husbands suddenly turned into a coven of tiresomely and neurotically liberal middle-class New York Times subscribers. They now fret endlessly about whether or not they have anything in common with Harvey Weinstein, get their boring and not-very-talented wives to do backing vocals on their tuneless songs, and record material that they wouldn’t have touched to scratch during the halcyon days of High Violet and Trouble Will Find Me. They still have their moments, don’t get me wrong, but their balls have been cut off and it shows. Too bad.
In an altogether more welcome twist, however, Matt Berninger’s solo records have stepped up to the plate where the National’s now merely tread water. 2020’s Serpentine Prison comprised downcast acoustic chamber pop, infinitely more characterful than anything on the previous year’s borderline unlistenable National record I Am Easy to Find, which drove a nail into the coffin of the band, as far as I’m concerned. On Get Sunk, he’s pulled the same trick again. The last two National records were merely passable, but this solo record is great; sardonic, lowkey, and most importantly of all, solidly written.
That said, I must confess myself a little disappointed that the sound of lead single “Bonnet of Pins” isn’t carried across the entire album. Its piercing lead guitar and amphetamine-fueled electronic drumbeats are blatantly inspired by New Order, though the obvious difference is that Matt Berninger’s lyrics are clever and coherent, whereas Bernard Sumner couldn’t write words for toffee. The inebriated stream-of-consciousness poetry of “Nowhere Special” is also straight out of the 1980s, though it’s more Pat Benatar than Peter Hook. But apart from these two exceptions, we’re dealing mostly with the same understated indie rock of Serpentine Prison, a more discreet sound than the National’s recent, racier records.
This might sound boring, but it isn’t, because Matthew is such an interesting and clever lyricist, and his drunken, slurred, baritone voice imbues every song with a slightly despondent, but unmistakably warm and sympathetic charisma. A lot of the tracks on Get Sunk are untransparently about Matt’s former beaus; on “Bonnet of Pins”, he’s confronted by an enchanting femme fatale ex who finishes off his drink while he sits rapt and speechless; on “Inland Ocean”, he visits the grave of an old friend who apparently didn’t make it; on “Times of Difficulty”, he implores a past flame to think of him kindly in periods of distress. When he’s not sentimentalizing his youthful conquests, he’s glumly meditating on the dully disappointing present, a tendency that reaches its apotheosis on the mordant “Little by Little.” Apparently, even internationally successful indie rockstars ultimately disintegrate into “dust and dreams.”
Some will be bored to tears by Matt Berninger’s staid solo music. And there’s no denying that, of the songs here, only “Bonnet of Pins” really gets the pulses racing. But to me, Get Sunk represents a dignified recognition of encroaching infirmity and mortality, one undertaken with considerable humor and, in a way, optimism, or at least acceptance. This immediately elevates it above other, perfectly mortifying attempts by decrepit rockers to relive former glories and deny the passing of time (recent records by the likes of Billy Idol and Marilyn Manson spring to mind here). Matt rages against the dying of the light with more verve than his band have in almost a decade, but he does so with quiet reserve, and for that, I applaud him.
Overall rating: * * * *
Standout track: “Bonnet of Pins”