The National
A Long Day's Journey Into Night
Recognition can be a hard thing to come by. The National know this. It’s taken almost 10 years for their talent to be afforded the critical and commercial acclaim they’ve so long and so richly deserved. Now, at last, they’re poised on the precipice, ready to make the leap into music’s premiere league. Theirs is a heartening tale, a conspicuous substance over style success story; the Brooklyn-based band turning every convention of contemporary alt-rock on its head and somehow managing not only to survive but thrive.
After 2001’s largely unheralded but rather affecting self-titled debut they gained some degree of recognition with 2003’s Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers, but it was 2005’s Alligator which really left a mark, sinking its teeth into the imagination of public and music pundits alike. It was an intriguing record and along with its successor, last year’s Boxer, argued fluently that emotional honesty and poetic intensity are more powerful than pumped-up bravado and clichéd rock histrionics. Instead The National’s music is tricked out with artful intricacies and insight, songs that take us by the hand and show us sadness, hurt, longing and hope, a long day’s journey into night.
Here, frontman Matt Berninger retraces the band’s path to date, talking everything from influences and inspirations, to the band’s peculiar affinity with their Irish audiences.
The National have been going almost a decade, do you find it strange when you compare where the band are now with what your initial intentions were?
“In one way it is very surprising and it’s certainly a great feeling. It’s not what we ever truly envisioned, to be touring the world getting on a tourbus and getting to flying all over the place, be it London or Turkey or wherever. That’s totally crazy. At the same time it has taken us over eight years of focus and of working on the band. In that respect we feel we should be here, we’ve sweated for it. In that sense we deserve it but we still have to pinch ourselves to believe that it’s actually happened.”
It hasn’t been an overnight success by any means, does that make it all the more satisfying the fact that you’ve worked hard to get where you are?
“We don’t take this for granted. The attention and success didn’t come quickly. We’re happy that we just kept doing what we do and that we didn’t try and channel something that was popular. We wouldn’t even know how to try or where to start. It’s very satisfying the fact that we just kept at it, even when we weren’t getting any attention we kept putting the records out, we knew we’d enjoyed making them even if we weren’t getting much recognition. But all along there were little signs of encouragement, an article or someone posting to say they thought the records were great and they believed in it. Little things like that. We never thought about giving up. So it was great, after a long time, to eventually have an audience find us.”
The success of Alligator and Boxer, with both albums being acclaimed and included in several ‘Best Of’ lists, did that feel like vindication?
“It was a validation. It just confirmed to us that we’d been doing the right thing all along, that we’d been right to believe in it. If you believe in it, keep making the music then people will hear that and they’ll eventually find it. You don’t need a slick marketing campaign or to spend a load of money on big fancy videos. Word of mouth is what did it for us. The past year and a half have been very validating.”
What was it like giving up the day jobs? Did it take a while to adjust?
“We really walked away from our day jobs before we maybe should have. Before we could afford to do so certainly. It wasn’t like one day the band got successful and we decided we could quit our jobs. We quit in order to do the band. We saw it as an opportunity we had to go for. To tour Europe, even when you’re playing venues to maybe 10 people, well you’ve just got to leave your jobs to try and do that. It was a scary thing to do, we all had rent to pay. We had jobs and all kinds of crazy things that we walked away from, all the comforts you have as an adult in New York City. We blew all our savings. But we knew we could always find those jobs again, however, being invited to play Italy or Germany, even if it’s not gonna pay for itself, those opportunities aren’t always gonna be possible. It was nerve wracking but things worked out really well. We’re so glad, looking back, that we didn’t think responsibly, that we gave up those jobs and pursued the dream of being in a rock band. We’re so happy that we were dumb enough to do that.”
Who are the artists you return to time and again, the touchstone acts who’ve inspired you, I’m guessing Nick Cave and R.E.M might figure?
Very much so. But it would be a different answer depending on who you talk to. But people like Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen definitely. Those heavy hitters, those are the kind of people we’re talking about. Someone like Nick Cave, for example, he was never the sort of musician who thought about how he should help his career commercially, you never felt, in anything he said or a single note he put down, that he was motivated by the desire to try and have a hit. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe there were many times when he tried to figure out a hit, but you never felt that those things were really that important with him. That’s my impression anyway. He just seems like a creative, hmmm, weirdo. I mean that in all the best ways! He’s making something that thrills him. Awkward, strange, fringe, the music full of darkness and shadows. People trust him and that’s why he’s held in such high esteem all these years. You just believe him.”
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