The National

Mandela Hall, Belfast

All aboard the last train to Cliché-ville, because we’re leaving the town of Critical Distance, firing up our engines with hyperbole briquettes, and we’re never coming back. Tonight, Brooklyn’s finest The National deliver an immense live performance, so good that before I can grab hold of my objectivity gland I’m haemorrhaging superlatives like “incendiary” and “blistering” – words lifted straight off the first page of Music Journalism For Dummies. But there really is no way around it: The National are both incendiary and blistering, whether they are playing headache rock–outs or subdued ballads coloured with tinsel and ivy. To be fair, half the battle is already won before they amble onstage.

The feedback from a sold–out run of shows in Dublin is staggeringly good, which may explain the calibre of audience member tonight: an Ed Zealous guitarist standing on the stairs, a Push Borders dude over by the bar, a Panama King mooching in a darkened corner. But The National are more than just a band’s band. From the moment that the opening chord is struck, they set fists aloft and voices ringing.

The set, mostly lifted from recent albums Boxer and Alligator, is anthemic in a way that Coldplay will never muster with their empty stadium rock. Much has been made of the fact that singer Matt Berninger makes for an awkward frontman: he is seemingly at odds with his own body, permamently uncomfortable in his own space. But this is not acting, friends. This is not a stage routine. This is the real deal. There is not even a hint of artifice in Matt’s behaviour – you won’t get any French Revolution uniforms or faux euphoric sky punching here. Whether he’s prowling the stage, clacking his knuckles together, bending the microphone and his body into crooked Jack Skellington shapes, Matt is permanently watchable. He becomes the emotional bellwether for the music swirling around him.

It’s transfixing, and it’s infectious. You can see it in the faces of the people crammed down at the crush barriers, as they stretch out their hands as if awaiting the Rapture. You can hear it in their voices, as they shout out every single word from ‘Fake Empire’, ‘Start A War’ and ‘Abel’. It’s incendiary, and yes, it’s blistering. Ross Thompson

Photograph by Michael Kerr

Issue #51 - I Told You This Would Be A Good Issue

Featuring Biffy Clyro, Of Montreal, Duke Special, Frightened Rabbit, Cold War Kids, Jay Reatard, Pat Mills, and more.