Sleep Well Beast

A new The National album is always an event in my life. Whereas other artists take the guest room: their music comes, their music goes; The National move in. Taking over the house, their tunes set into the plaster, becoming part of the fabric of daily life. Ever since I heard them ten years ago, the band has meant a lot to me. Whenever people talk about The National, they say things like, “their albums take a few listen,” or “you might not think much of it at first, but give it a while.” They are seen as growers: the kind of diffident school kids that people kick into the shadows; the kind, though, that when given time and attention bloom into something extraordinary. Although I understand other people feel this way about the band, it’s not how I would describe my relationship. This wasn’t a Harry and Sally courtship of many years; it was Romeo and Juliet, a sweet surrender, love at first listen.

It didn't take a whole movie for me and The National to get together.

The two missionaries my friend sent out on a conversion course were ‘Fake Empire’ and ‘All The Wine.’ I still remember the MixTape. “Fake Empire’ was the first track and ‘All The Wine’ was near the end – just like the track position on their respective albums. ‘Empire’ was sophistication to my ears. ‘Tiptoe through our shiny city with our diamond slippers on”- I’d been waiting years to hear lyrics like that. In a songwriting world of nouns, someone was using adjectives – gorgeous ones at that. The song is something of a siren though. Its earlier imagery is a deception because by the end there is talk of someone ‘falling through the sky;’ that along with a cacophony of brass suggest all is not well in Bush’s America. This juxtaposition of beauty and horror is what The National do so well. 

‘All The Wine’ struck me as the best distillation of drunkenness committed to song. It captures the sweet spot of drinking, a temporary heaven the demons can’t reach. Tomorrow you’ll feel murky and shit but right here, right now, you feel exceptional: the A-grade ‘perfect piece of ass,’ the charismatic ‘festival,' the showboating ‘parade.’ With lines like ‘the motorcade will have to go around me this time,’ the song is also very funny. The image of a drunk diverting a processional route is hilarious, pointing to an off-beat humour that many ignore when considering the band. After hearing these two tunes, I bought Boxer and then worked backwards through the albums. Then, like every other National fan I’ve had to wait for each new release; the wait for Sleep Well Beast has been the longest yet – four years: was it worth it?

Due to the solo projects of band members, Sleep Well Beast has benefited from a longer gestation period. Guitarists Aaron and Bryce Dessner for instance have been producing albums and movie scores for Frightened Rabbit and The Revenant respectively. The other band siblings, drummer Bryan and bassist Scott Devendorf were instrumental in curating a Grateful Dead compilation that features over 60 artists. And vocalist Matt Berninger collaborated with Brent Knopf on their album Return to the Moon. Although the band’s open relationship might frustrate fans waiting on an album, in the long-run this might be a good thing: the individuals can go out and sow their wild oats and then come back into the fold ready to make sweet music again. It’s better that the band give one another space, than resent the suffocating circumstances of tour-record-repeat.

Because the band have spent time working with others, it’s understandable that their sound has changed. The Dessners, the band's musical force, are friends with Bon Iver; this could explain the band’s evolution into electronica – a move he too has made. Indeed, the difference between this record and the last is the most marked since Alligator and Boxer, which saw the band look beyond their competencies and co-opt outside agents to form an orchestral sound. On Sleep Well Beast the sound isn’t red wine rich; it's more mulled and sketchy.

It begins with ‘Nobody Else Will Be There,’ which has Berninger's nighttime voice summoning his love home. He doesn’t want to be surrounded by strangers, but home with her – a motif that started on Boxer with ‘Slow Show’ and ‘Apartment Story.' It’s an understated opening, one that doesn’t come out of the traps like ‘Secret Meeting’ or ‘Terrible Love.’ Its coil of piano seeps into your brain though, and when Berninger changes pitch half way through at "Hey baby" your heart surrenders to the troubadour. Much has been written about the lyrical content being fictionalised- a Berninger marriage survival guide, if you will, where he writes his fears in the hope they won’t come to pass. Although this gets to the pith and the core of the album, it doesn’t tell the whole story. A later track ‘Dark Side Of The Gym’ doesn’t read or sound like a psychiatrist’s homework task, instead it sways and shuffles like a first dance. It recalls the romanticism of Richard Hawley, in that it’s a big wet rose of a tune, re-positioning him and his wife as Adam and Eve, being serenaded by cherubs in the Garden of Eden.

Critics are right to pick up on the thematic concern of a relationship in crisis AKA 'the seven-year itch.' One wonders how Berninger’s wife, a former New Yorker fiction editor, feels when she proofs ‘Day I Die.’ It’s a fiesta celebrating the passing of a relationship; a dream of an after-life with someone else. Its jubilant reiteration of death captures those terrible moments in marriage where you would rather be six-foot underground than next to the partner you love. It’s a booty call for the Reaper to make him a bedfellow of him. It’s a tune that puts the dark into humour. On ‘Empire Line’ too, the weight of romance weighs heavily. The feeling of not being able to communicate is desperate here though, less tongue-in-cheek, more heart-on-sleeve, "Can’t you find a way? Can’t you find a way? You’re in this too?" Towards the end, the song dissolves into a brass section, redolent of ‘Fake Empire,’ illustrating the enormity of the emotion.

Another preoccupation on the record seems to be mental illness; a theme best discussed with reference to ‘Walk It Back’ and ‘I'll Still Destroy You.’ The first with its blips and beeps is a malfunctioning robot. Our protagonist ruefully puts pay to Gandhi’s ‘Be the change you want to see,’ by decrying ‘nothing I change changes anything.’ He is the paranoid android of Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, alone and adrift, unable to see the wood from the trees. Inertia has displaced body and water; he’s comprised wholly of pessimism and defeat. Towards the end, the voice and guitar gets a little warmer with the concession ‘I’ll need you light.’ As yet he can’t see hope, but at least he knows it exists. 

‘I’ll Still Destroy You’ has Berninger climbing out of the basement of his brain to reclaim his happy place. It tackles the early stages of medication when your body is thrown out of sync. There are moments when the caplets evoke happiness ("this one like your mother’s arms when she was young and sunburned") and shame ("this one’s like your sister’s best friends in a bath calling you to join them.") Even when levelled you feel hopeless, because clarity brings as much trouble as delusion: clear-headed, you realise you’ve got to get your shit together and clear up the house you’ve left to ruin. At the end though, we get that light again: ‘it’s just the lights coming on.’ For me, the coda recalled Bloc Party’s ‘So Here We Are,’ in that it builds to Berninger’s transfiguration: bathed in light, he achieves spiritual transcendence, accepting life is for living.

On the final track, Sleep Well Beast there is relapse, a sense the battle can't be won. The demon has scorched-earthed hope, leaving Berninger lost to nightmares again. This incoherence is mirrored in the surrounding guitar parts, which stir and stalk. Will our hero ever tame his monster? Or like Dr.

Frankenstein is he too afraid to?

Sleep Well Beast is an album full of demons and angels. It will take you into the pit of the human psyche, and elevate you to the skies of human creativity. After four years, the beast has been unleashed. Lie with it and tell me what you think.