My Head Inside The Speakers: An Evening with The National
In the wake of Tom Petty passing away, I’ve made a renewed commitment to attend live shows if and at all possible. After all, one never knows when an artist or band’s trip through town will be their last. Grain of salt, this is financially strenuous at times, and not always 100% possible — there are bills to pay, unknown expenses, buying food is usually recommended to do so from time to time, etc.
So it helps when the band in question gives away tickets for free.
About Thursday afternoon, I received a Facebook update from The National’s account, alerting me (and thousands of other fans, I’m sure) to a pop-up concert at the House of Vans on Monday. All one had to do was sign up for a mailing list, and you were entered into a raffle for tickets.
(The first moral of this story is ‘always sign up for newslists’, by the way.)
I entered the raffle, not expecting much — The National are at their peak right now, and in the middle of a very successful tour supporting a very successful album. If nothing else, I tried. Besides, they were coming back in December for a two night stand at the Lyric Opera House, and I had tickets to see them for the second night.
As you might guess, I was alerted Friday that I had won a pair of tickets for the Monday evening show.
After some quick negotiations with an understanding boss at work, I was able to jet off on Monday at 4:15 for the House of Vans. I’d never been to the location, and only knew of it as some kind of skate-house/proto-punk/corporate-punk concert hall in the West Loop. I also knew that tickets were not guaranteed for this concert — the band had ‘oversold’ free tickets to ensure a max capacity house, so if you showed up too late, you would find yourself at the end of a very, very, very long line.
(Seriously, though I don’t have pictures of it, trust me when I say it was nuts. The line snaked around a Chicago city block — this is a sizable amount of people, and I have a fair amount of pity for the poor bastards who showed up at 5:30, stood around in windy 40 degree weather, only to be told there was no room at the inn.)
Upon entering the space, a couple things struck me:
- the space was roughly the size of a three car garage, making for very close proximity to the stage if you happened to be among the first to enter the place
- the drinks were complimentary
As I joked with my friend, it’s almost as if the band wanted everyone to get rowdy.
They did. Oh, they did.
One of the most common digs against The National is that they’re dull. Some of their most well-known songs produce a lyrical, melancholy post-punk soundscape marked by spacious guitars, forlorn synths, and the droning baritone of Matt Berninger. People knock the band as “hipster white boy rockers from Brooklyn”. (They are.) They will say that their music is too dense to get. (Not true.) Above all, The National are boring.
Those people have clearly never seen Matt Berninger stage-dive into a crowd after downing three glasses of what I can only assume is pure whiskey.
In person, the spacious guitars and forlorn synths of the band give way to an unbridled intensity that never lets up. The brothers Dessner (Aaron and Bryce) are consummate musicians, both technically proficient on guitar without giving way to excess or flamboyance, something The National’s music calls for in order to function. On songs such as “Guilty Party” or “Carin at the Liquor Store”, solos and lead lines are airy and elegant, as fragile as glass and yet tempered with steel. On other songs such as the fierce anti-Trump rant “Turtleneck”, they will cut loose with solos that expand upon the music’s vocabulary — these are not pieces made to stand alone as virtuoso showcases, but part of a whole.
The back beat of the band is what ties the soundscapes together, and allows for their musicianship to curdle into full-on outspoken rock and roll. The brothers Devendorf ground it all with as tight of a rhythm section as exists in rock today. Anyone who has listened to Boxer, the band’s breakthrough fourth album, knows of the musicianship that Brian Devendorf brings with his drums. In concert, his driving, pulsing rhythms are as prevalent as ever on songs like “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness” and “The Day I Die”.
All of that is well and good — the band are really talented, they’re really a band in a way that escapes most modern rock artists, ‘their music is good’, etc. But nothing I can write will ever capture the true immediacy of the concert at the House of Vans, and for how I watched Matt Berninger lose his god damned mind on multiple occasions.
There’s a reason why most bands playing big shows are separated from the crowd — people get rowdy, people throw things, and in our modern age, no space is truly safe. (America 2017) That made The National’s choice to basically throw a free garage party all the more surprising. Berninger dove from the stage multiple times, screaming his head off as though existence depended upon losing his voice as quickly as possible — The National’s reputation as a quiet band would not prepare anyone for their live act. Having the band be within chucking range of an empty beer cup made for one of the most exhilarating and immediately present concert experiences I’ve ever had. I haven’t been that locked into a band’s rhythm since my high school ska-punk days. (Yes, I came of age in the late 90's/early 00's.)
It also made for an intensely intimate experience. What The National really excel at is telling stories through music about the struggle of just staying connected with one another on a day to day basis. There’s a clear arc from Alligator on through to their newest record, Sleep Well Beast, that tells of meeting one another, forging a connection, and then fighting tooth and nail just to keep it. The romantic songs on Sleep Well Beast aren’t about true love overcoming all — it’s about love that is a full-time job, about laboring just to be people who can still stand to be around one another, about grappling with mortality and shouting into the void together.
Berninger’s moody baritone gives way to unbridled rage and vigor onstage, yes — he can strut with the best rock stars of his era, no doubt. But one of the reason that The National survived the boom & bust of the early ’00s indie-rock scene is how deeply felt their music is, and how Berninger can forge connections with an upturned flick of his voice. Sure, he’s the guy who stands at the microphone and literally does not know what to do with his hands, but once he’s locked in with the band, his expressive range allows you to feel the subtext beneath the external angst.
This has been a pretty shitty year, all things considered. At the same time as it feels that our country is going to hell in a hand basket, I’ve had a relationship blow up in my face, I’ve faced personal challenges and self-doubt in my work, and I’ve started to come to terms with the inescapable fact that I’m getting older. But the soundtrack that helps me get to it is powered by a bunch of ‘hipster white boys from Brooklyn’ who are able to encapsulate the pain that is existence into a cycle of pop-rock songs that remind you that we’ve all been there, and we’re all going to get through this, and so long as there’s free beer in the back, the music will go on, and it will be okay, just come outside and leave with me.
