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Apr 18, 2025 By Mark Redfern

Matt Berninger of The National is releasing a new solo album, Get Sunk, on May 30 via Book, Berninger’s imprint with Concord. Now he has shared its second single, “Breaking Into Acting,” which features Hand Habits (aka Meg Duffy). Duffy is also in the song’s video with Berninger. Hopper Mills directed the video. Watch it below.

“Sometimes you have to fake forgiveness before you can actually forgive,” Berninger briefly says about the new song in a press release.

Previously Berninger released the album’s first single, “Bonnet of Pins,” which was one of our Songs of the Week.

Get Sunk is Berninger’s second solo album and follows 2020’s Serpentine Prison. For the new album, Berninger partnered with Grammy Award-winning producer and engineer Sean O’Brien, who co-wrote many of the album’s songs. Get Sunk was recorded in a basement studio in Silverlake, CA. The album features a slew of special guests, including Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), Julia Laws (Ronboy), Kyle Resnick (The National, Beirut), Garret Lang, Sterling Laws, Booker T Jones, Harrison Whitford, Mike Brewer, and The Walkmen’s Walter Martin and Paul Maroon.

A press release says Get Sunk is “not necessarily an autobiographical album, the narrator is processing how he became himself. Berninger is an expert in what it feels like to lose all bravery, and Get Sunk points to an undulating reflection in the water. It’s about realizing that you are not yourself without a thousand others: parents, friends, siblings, spouses and exes, college roommates, childhood best friends, cousins, kids, and even strangers.”

The album was partially inspired by the singer/songwriter’s move to Connecticut after years living in Los Angeles. Once there he enjoyed the flora and fauna of the state and “rearranged dust-covered items in his barn into strange and surreal works of art. It felt good to be creating and to understand why he loves what he does,” as the press release points out.

Berninger adds: “I was able to get the blurry picture as close to just right for me.”

In 2023 The National released two albums, First Two Pages of Frankenstein and Laugh Track.

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