Album of the Week: The National

News
All

Album of the Week: The National

Sleep Well Beast Out Now via 4AD

Sep 08, 2017 Album of the Week By Billy Hamilton

Find It At: {article-find} {name} {/article-find}

The National is The National is The National. After 18 years and six albums, the Ohio spawned ensemble make a sound you can spot a mile off: that rich rumble of Matt Berninger’s moribund baritone; those quivering, tear-duct moistening laments; the spiralling weaves of delicate guitar. Each is the signature of a band that’s burrowed a strong identity groove over the passing years.

Which is exactly what makes album number seven Sleep Well Beast so fascinating. Here the blueprint remains the same as ever, but the execution is more vigorous and purposeful than anything since 2007’s sublime Boxer. From the moment Berninger croaks over piano stained opener “Nobody Else Will Be There” right the way through to the title track’s swansong of glitching electronics it’s obvious The National are mining from a fresh well of impetus.

Perhaps it’s down to the constituent parts no longer living on top of one another. The space between them has been talked up in the record’s pre-release press blitz, and there’s certainly a tighter, more taut atmosphere brewing amongst the likes of the stampeding “Day I Die” and their unlikely (if only for the title) commercial triumph, the jinking “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness.”

Elsewhere, the record ruminates between the fraught and the fragile with typical poise. The brilliant metallic brawl “Turtleneck”-where Berninger awakens his inner Nick Cave- crashes into the ear canals like a barbed wired typhoon. “Guilty Party” is the sheer antithesis, a velvety cushion of piano, plucked guitar and parping brass; while the “Dark Side of the Gym” is the band at its redolent, heart-string tugging best.

Sure, there’s nothing radically different here. Thematically and aesthetically it’s what they’ve always done. But there’s something else at play with Sleep Well Beast. Something more intense, something altogether more breathtaking. That something? The sound of a band scaling even greater heights.

Read our rave 9/10 review of Sleep Well Beast.

www.americanmary.com