Understated ‘sad dad rock’ for depressed, middle-aged, middle-class, unhappily married men, is how a cynic might characterise the National’s music. As I slot very neatly into precisely that demographic, I believe I am well placed to offer an evaluation and ranking of their discography. As it happens, I came to the National later in life; they are my wife’s favourite band, and she had to prevail on me to give them more of a chance, because I initially found them to be rather inaccessible, even boring, with their restrained, monotonal, somewhat impenetrable songs and sometimes opaque lyrics. But – and I believe this is a common experience – they grew on me, probably as my thirties segued into my forties and I became precisely the kind of disillusioned, sleep-deprived, wine-quaffing parent whose experiences Matt Berninger thematises in his lyrics. All of which highlights the centrality of the frontman to the importance of this band. To my mind, without his unique baritone voice and cryptic lyrics, the National might well have sunk into obscurity, like countless other early-noughties indie rock bands of comparable vintage. Somehow, Matt Berninger always sounds slightly drunk, like he’s sat at the bar of some golf club, empty tumbler in hand, the top button of his shirt open and his tie in his pocket, dispensing a strange, slurred combination of nonsense and wisdom. The reticent, disjointed music merely provides the necessary backdrop to his gruffly articulated bourgeois psychodramas. And speaking of bourgeois psychodramas, I will allege in the following album ranking that an intrinsic link exists between peak-era National and the presidency of Barack Obama.
The National (2001)
When I finally got round to listening to the National’s debut album after years of putting it off, I found it to be unfathomably boring; almost none of the songs made any impression on me. The National are masters of the slow burner and so, unsurprisingly, even their debut grows on you a bit, but it’s definitely not as engaging or inventive as some of their later material. In fact, it’s a fairly typical early-2000s indie-rock album, bordering on country music, with a determinedly basic guitar – bass – drum – piano arrangement, and a tone that deviates little from mellow and good-natured, if somewhat troubled, for the record’s 45-minute duration. The songs tend to blur into a single, fairly indistinguishable blob of low-key alt-country indie rock, but there are some highlights, most notably the opener, “Beautiful Head”, a pacy, rather bad-tempered riposte to a lover who thinks she can redesign her life and drop Matt like a bad penny; the deceptively bitter and funereal “American Mary”; and the moving “Son”, which I guess is a deceased father’s sad communique from beyond the grave. But the show is stolen by Matt Berninger’s world-weary baritone voice and rye, cryptic lyrics, making his contribution the standout feature of this passable but otherwise unremarkable album.
Rating: * *
Standout track: “American Mary”
Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers (2003)
At the tail end of recording their debut album, the National recruited a new guitarist in Bryce Dessner, and it shows on Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers. This is the first time that we can hear an embryonic rendering of the quintessential National sound – the throbbing bass, the driving drums, the sharp, stabbing guitars, all soundtracking the drunk, distressed vocals and adroit, “sad dad” lyrics. From what I can gather, Sad Songs isn’t particularly highly regarded among the band’s fanbase, who tend to save their adulation for the four-album run that followed. But, from the perspective of a casual afficionado, this is one of my favourite albums of theirs; accessible, determinedly downbeat, and the lyrics are a bit more red-blooded and revelatory than the wet blanketry that would blight their later records. Everything from the first to the seventh song is great, particularly “Slipping Husband”, a tortured meditation on fatherhood and a failing marriage, and the dark duo of “90-Mile Water Wall” and “Thirsty”, sombre songs with unsettling lyrics. Sadly, the last third of the album is eminently forgettable, although “Lucky You” steps in at the death to rescue the situation with an incongruously upbeat, heartfelt, witty closer. A most underrated entry into their oeuvre.
Rating: * * *
Standout track: “Thirsty”
Alligator (2005)
This is the album that broke the National; it sold 200,000 copies, ten times as many as its predecessor, and it represents an instructive distillation of the band’s early signature sound; the slow, shrill guitars, the undulating bass lines, the hammering and relentless drums, all providing a somewhat disorientating musical backdrop to Matt Berninger’s sloshed vocals and fractured lyrics. Personally, though, I’m ambivalent about Alligator. For a start, the mix is sloppy – it lacks the glassy, crystal-clear precision of the National’s other records, and I find the songs a bit inaccessible and lacking in immediacy – the entire album tends to blur into a rather shrill-sounding mush of sharp, plucked guitars and driving drums. That said, there is a compelling argument that this muddiness actually enhances Alligator by creating its unique, all-permeating feeling of dishevelled, drunken lugubriousness, the quintessential conjuring of which can be heard on “Secret Meeting”, the album’s rather paranoid opener. A number of standout songs break the stuporous air, most notably the simultaneously triumphant and downcast “Geese of Beverley Road”, a testament to the possibilities and delusions of youth; and the raucous “Mr November”, one of many songs on the album about stage fright and panic attacks, if I’m not mistaken. So Alligator is a slow burner though, with the passing of time, I’ve come to better appreciate its quietly furious, somewhat claustrophobic, oddly restrained sound.
Rating: * * * *
Standout track: “Mr November”
Boxer (2007)
Boxer is the second entry in the National’s storied four album run. By providing the backing song to a Barrack Obama campaign video, it apparently tapped into the moderately depressed, but quietly optimistic, zeitgeist of the American middle-classes in the late-noughties. For the most part, the songs are typically low-key but, crucially, the overall sound is cleaner, more orderly, and at times, more anthemic than on the dense and frazzled Alligator. The themes are familiar – a rather sissified and codependent conception of romantic love, the pressures of fame and performing and, very notably on this album, the “un-magnificent lives of adults”, the quiet despair of bourgeois professionals such as, well, Matt Berninger. There’s barely a dud track on Boxer, and the highlights are some of their best work – the piano driven “Fake Empire”, a tender paeon to getting wasted in world history’s sole hyperpower at the peak of its imperial hubris; “Mistaken for Strangers”, a jarring and somewhat unhinged meditation on middle-aged ships passing in the night; and perhaps the National’s best tearjerker, “Slow Show”, where poor old Matt gets picked up and put back together by his partner after, presumably, a particularly trying gig. The album sounds entirely of its time; the songs are memorable and graceful; and there are quotable lyrical couplets in abundance, even by the National’s eminently literate standards. Only toward the end of the record, with “Ada” and “Gospel”, does my attention start to waver, but even the latter is a worthy closer, an unwelcome reminder of the Iraq War and its traumatic impact on American society.
Rating: * * * *
Standout track: “Slow Show”
High Violet (2010)
We are well into the National’s imperial phase now. High Violet was showered with critical praise, sold around half a million copies and, judging by the very unscientific survey of the band’s fanbase that I conducted online, is widely considered to be their best album. Indeed, it’s the sweet spot in their catalogue, where they successfully balance the unpolished but absorbing aura of Alligator with the more anthemic stylings of Boxer. With that said, the first five songs on this album represent the National at their darkest. Their reputation for miserabilism notwithstanding, I find that there’s usually an undercurrent of humour to even their most maudlin material (one of many things they have in common with the Smiths). But the first half of High Violet is riven with the unmistakeable, unremitting flatness of authentic clinical depression, from the dismal and tormented “Terrible Love” to the record’s brooding epicentre, two profoundly distressed songs entitled “Little Faith” and “Afraid of Everyone.” The second half of High Violet is somewhat lighter, with the stirring lead single “Bloodbuzz Ohio”, the clingy love songs “Runaway” and “Conversation 16”, and the jaunty “England”, a late spring in the album’s step. But then it closes with the eerie and impenetrable “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks”, which duly signposts the Major Depressive Episode of the next album. Overall, High Violet is a perfect record.
Rating: * * * * *
Standout track: “Little Faith”
Trouble Will Find Me (2013)
This is the final entry in the National’s feted four album run, and it’s very good though, in my opinion, a step down from its two predecessors. Compared with Boxer and High Violet, the songs on Trouble Will Find Me are more sprawling and sometimes meandering, quieter, flatter, and less immediate. Almost from start to finish, the tone remains determinedly downbeat and oddly vacant, pervaded by an air of fragile and relentless sadness. The humour and levity of Boxer is in very short supply, though it does emerge toward the close of the album, especially on the dreamlike “Humiliation” and the plodding, playful “Pink Rabbits”. Overall, though, Trouble Will Find Me is a profoundly haunted album, the lyrics full of shadows and ghosts from the past, ex-lovers who left poor Matthew “high and sad” (“This is the Last Time”) or, perhaps, ex-lovers that he feels guilty about leaving (“I Should Live in Salt”). The delicate and mournful “I Need my Girl” best exemplifies the record’s plaintive mien, although, when it does take off and gather some momentum, it produces two frantic, desperate highlights in “Sea of Love” and “Don’t Swallow the Cap”. The album offers an uncomfortable, rather eerie listen, and a fitting lament to the twilight of their imperial phase.
Rating: * * * *
Standout track: “Sea of Love”
Continued in part II