Album Review: The National - First Two Pages of Frankenstein
“You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.”
The first two pages of Frankenstein are a letter—or, rather, are written as if they were from a letter.
Like, the book, Frankenstein, or its rarely used, full title, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, written by Mary Shelley and published in 1818—the entire book itself was written as, yes, what is ultimately a cautionary tale, but also as if it were a series of letters.
It’s a literary device called an “epistolary,” which then creates a secondary device where one part of the narrative becomes a “frame story” for another.
The first two pages were written as if they were from a letter sent by one character—Captain Robert Walton, and addressed to another—his sister, Margaret Walton Seville.
I’ve never read Frankenstein—nor have I, to my knowledge, seen the 1931 film adaptation starring Boris Karloff as “Frankenstein’s Monster.”
And that’s the thing—a common misnomer and the punch line to a joke1 that circulates occasionally on the internet. The name “Frankenstein” is, in fact, the last name of the doctor, or the scientist, in the book and then later in the film—in the book, his first name is Victor; in the film, it is Henry.
Regardless, the creature, or the “monster,” itself is not, nor has ever been, named “Frankenstein.”
But the first two pages of Frankenstein are a letter, or, rather, are written as if they were from a letter, and even within those first two pages, there is a lot that can be analyzed, or, as my therapist would say, there is a lot that one could unpack. And because it was written over 200 years ago in what can arguably be now referred to as an obsolete vernacular, I am uncertain about Shelley’s intention with the way certain words are placed within a turn of phrase—i.e., the first line, and specifically the juxtaposition of the words “rejoice” and “disaster,” and how they are placed so close together, and this sentence itself culminating in the expression “evil forebodings.”
I’ve never read Frankenstein, but several years back, I bought a copy of it for my wife—I don’t recall which edition (there are a number of them), but after taking in the traveling Guillermo del Toro retrospective exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, she had expressed interest in reading some of the books that were referenced or implied to have had an influence on him as a filmmaker, or served as partial inspiration throughout his career. Bleak House by Charles Dickens was one, as were the stories of H.P. Lovecraft.
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, was another.
Like any literary work written during an entirely different era, and then read by someone hundreds of years later, the assessment my wife gave, at first, of Frankenstein, was that it was surprisingly boring.
She was hoping it would be much more frightening than it was.
*
I think the first time I ever dealt with something you could consider to be a form of writer’s block was roughly five years ago, as the year was coming to an end, and I found myself, as I often do in November and December, where I begin wondering how sustainable it is for me to continue writing about music—but this year, specifically, I was also struggling with the sudden and unexpected disappearance of an avenue I had for regularly writing creative non-fiction.
The sustainability questioning occurs simply due to the onset of burnout from how hard I have pushed myself in the months leading up to the final third of a calendar year, coupled with the daunting task I set to compile lists of my favorite songs and albums of the year.
However, I feel as I wrap those up and schedule them to be published on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, respectively, I am also always looking ahead into the new year—January and February are notoriously a barren landscape of new, or interesting music for one to write about, and my enthusiasm for all of it continues to wane.
As I am working through these feelings, and whatever misgivings I have about continuing to write about music, year after year, I then find myself wondering if this is the year I decide to say that over the time I have been doing this as a “passion project,” I’ve learned a lot and that it has provided a surprising amount of opportunities elsewhere (many of them professional) but that maybe it is finally time to call it a day and move on to something else.
But, I somehow always find my way back, and find the enthusiasm, and interest, once again.
The loss of the avenue that I had for regularly writing personal essays or creative non-fiction, however, has not had a negative impact on my interest in that kind of writing—far from it, actually, but it did ultimately create an unwanted, long-term effect on my capabilities to do so with confidence. The ideas for pieces like that are constantly swirling around, but my ability to focus on those ideas, or topics, and develop them with the intensity and ease I once had, hasn’t vanished completely, but it is nowhere near as present as it once was.
It’s not for lack of trying, though, and throughout 2019, I stumbled through a few personal essays during the first half of the year, attempting to recreate the way I was splitting my time between music writing, and these longer non-fiction pieces, but after putting together four of them, and then for reasons I do not entirely recall, I stopped, and haven’t successfully completed and published a personal essay or any pieces of creative non-fiction in three years.
It’s not for lack of trying, though, when I sit down with a new word processing document on the smudged and oily screen of my laptop and make the effort to gather my thoughts about something—often my debilitating depression—and organize those thoughts into the word count maximum to submit the piece in question to a competition held by various literary journals, which have, so far, only lead to an inbox full of polite, though impersonal, rejection letters.
It’s not for lack of trying, though, when I sit down with a new word processor document on the smudged and oily screen of my laptop, which, regardless of what I intend to write about—can be extremely intimidating, or lead to instances of second-guessing every word, and every sentence, and ever punctuation mark, or moments of critical self-editing that pull me backward rather than pushing me forward.
I occupy this space that forms between an album review, or music criticism and analysis, and an essay, or creative non-fiction, but even in this space, sometimes there are not so much blocks, but there are false starts, or directions that ultimately do not work out the way I envisioned them to, and the piece then requires a little more effort to gain the momentum it needs, and I, then, need a little more time to find my way.
There are not so much blocks, but there is a pressure that I place on myself, even before my fingers have graced the keyboard, that the next piece I sit down to write has to, in some way, better, or more thoughtful and emotionally affecting than the piece that has come before it.
And buckling under that pressure, and getting ahead of myself completely, is something that contributes to those numerous false starts or directions that ultimately do not work out the way I envisioned them to.
The cursor continues to blink against the white background of the word-processing document, and I have to hope that I am, in time, going to find my way.
*
I am no longer asked this question at this point in my life, but in the past, if someone were to ask me what my all-time favorite bands are, the answer for well over half of my life has been Radiohead, and, for the last 17 years or so, The National are a close second.
And maybe it is a bit of a stretch, but when I was writing about The National’s 2017 album, Sleep Well Beast, at the time, I attempted to make what could, retrospectively, be seen as a bit of a flimsy, or at least a not as well thought out as it could have been comparison between the two bands—going so far as to, perhaps boldly, refer to The National as “the American Radiohead.”
And maybe it is a bit of a stretch.
Maybe.
But it maybe it is not as far fetched of an idea as one may think once you begin to explore the myriad similarities.
Both bands have five core members—Radiohead often consider their longtime producer and regular collaborator Nigel Godrich an “unofficial” member of the group. The same goes for Stanley Donwood, the visual artist responsible for the immersive and ambitious look of nearly every one of their records as a group (as well as their various side projects and solo outings) has taken.
The National, in turn, at least up until the years between High Violet and Trouble Will Find Me, often wrote and recorded, as well as toured, with the string player Padma Newsome, who was considered to be the sixth member of the group, though, over the last decade, he has had little if any involvement with them.
I think at one point, I had tried to discern if he had some kind of falling out with the group, or maybe with just specific members of The National, and I thought that I had, perhaps, read somewhere that he ceased contributing because he had grown tired of, or at the very least, less interested in the band’s touring commitments the larger their profile grew in the late 2000s—but I’m unable to confirm any of that.
My attempts at searching “Padma Newsome The National Falling Out” came up, unfortunately, short.
Regardless, both bands—in crafting dense and layered albums within the studio, require additional musicians to bring it to life on stage: Radiohead, following the release of The King of Limbs, brought on an additional percussionist; The National, over the last decade, has added two multi-instrumentalists to their live configuration in an attempt to do justice to the recreation of the continued growth and enormity of their sound.
Both groups involve siblings—Colin and Jonny Greenwood in Radiohead, and two sets (one of whom are twins) in The National—bassist Scott and drummer Bryan Devendorf, and guitarists (among other instruments and contributions) Aaron and Bryce Dessner.
Both groups involve one of those respective siblings transcending their original role in the band and becoming, for lack of a more articulate way to describe it, virtuosic and prolific in other ways—Jonny Greenwood, aside from being Radiohead’s frenetic lead guitarist, and playing countless additional and often idiosyncratic instruments on the group’s albums, has made a name for himself as a film score composer—notably collaborating with auteur Paul Thomas Anderson.
Aaron and Bryce Dessner have explored several other avenues outside of their efforts within The National—they, too, have worked together on a handful of film scores, as well as a stage musical, but it is Aaron who, after some casual work producing records for a smattering of others, suddenly found himself an in-demand name within the work of “pop music” after his surprise collaborations with Taylor Swift in 2020 on Folklore and Evermore.
Both bands feature frontmen—lead singers and principal lyricists, who are arguably iconic in their voices, and their unique presence within the band’s dynamic.
Most importantly, and I think what served as the original flimsy conceit in my attempt to draw a very direct comparison between Radiohead and The National in 2017, was that they are both bands that have been willing to take risks, and continue to grow, or push themselves as artists.
It doesn’t mean they are “fearless,” though—I mean, it can look that way, or sound that way, and of course, it should, but in the end, when the record is out, it should sound like a band that is completely confident in their abilities to operate without a safety net underneath them.
The tensions within both bands, however, run high, during the creative process that ultimately results in these albums. The turmoil and contention in Radiohead is perhaps more well documented, specifically as the band became much more ambitious in their approach to achieving a greater, more intricate sound, exemplified in the space between The Bends and OK Computer, and then in the wake of OK Computer’s success, the fraught sessions for Kid A and its companion piece Amnesiac, which found the group drastically deconstructing, then rebuilding itself
The tensions (and the alleged literal coming to blows) within The National—perhaps it has to do with how many siblings are included within the group—are what, in part, inspired the title of their breakthrough fourth full-length, Boxer, and like Radiohead, though certainly not as drastic, have grown, and their dynamic has evolved out of its ramshackle early days, and even on their last few efforts, have somewhat outgrown the brooding, guitar-driven “indie rock” of their mid-period records.
There are still guitars present, and now, there is just a little more ferocity and precision to them compared to the past, and the song’s arrangements have become much more complicated and densely layered, which was something The National began to experiment with on the lush and bombastic High Violet, which is often considered to be their finest moment from start to finish, and since then, their sound has continued to develop in scope, leading up to the somewhat surprising, and at times, admittedly, a little clunky, incorporation of glitchy electronic textures on both 2017’s Sleep Well Beast and its follow up from 2019, I Am Easy to Find.
*
The first two pages of Frankenstein are a letter—or, rather, are written as if they were from a letter, and Frankenstein, like, neither the book, in its entirety, written by Mary Shelley and published in 1818, nor its first two pages are really all that imperative to a kind of understanding, or an unlocking, if you will, to anything regarding the ninth full-length album from The National, First Two Pages of Frankenstein, though the book did play a role in the long-gestating creation of the record.
As detailed in the press cycle before the release of the album, in early 2020, when The National had started preliminary work on new material, the band’s lead singer and primary lyricist, Matt Berninger, was struggling with what would become debilitating writer’s block.
In a profile from The Washington Post, he explains he had dealt with creative blocks in the past, that had maybe lasted a month or two, but he found this one stretching out nearly two years—describing it as hitting a wall. “I fell off the bike or something,” he’s quoted as saying. “I’d always been working on songs for so long, and the gears just froze.”
“I never thought, ‘It might actually be gone’ before,” Berninger continued. “I’d never gone into something that paralyzing.”
During the time that Berninger was struggling with his inability to write new material for The National—deep into the pandemic which had put a stop to the band’s touring plans, and deep into a depression brought on by both his writer’s block and the state of the world, he was attempting to promote, as much as anyone could during the first year of the pandemic, his solo debut.
At the end of 2019, Berninger, under his own name, had issued the single, “Walking on A String,” and in the spring of 2020, formally announced Serpentine Prison, a subdued affair written collaboratively with Booker T. Jones working on the album’s arranging, arriving in October.
But behind the scenes of whatever promotion Berninger could do for Serpentine Prison, he was still creatively stalled, and lyrics for the instrumental pieces that the other four members of The National were slowly working on, weren’t coming to him.
And while Berninger was more or less spiraling and wondering if this was the beginning of the end of the band, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Aaron Dessner had found himself in what would quickly become a prolific and successful creative partnership with Taylor Swift, co-writing, arranging, and producing roughly half of Folklore, and almost all of its companion piece, Evermore—apparently early incarnations of what would go on to become “Cardigan” and “Willow,” were originally developed as National tracks that Berninger was unable to put words to at the time.
It is in a profile of The National from NME where it is revealed that reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein aided in the process of pulling Berninger out of his writer’s block—and the band as a whole then opting to take a different approach to constructing this set of songs once they convened at Aaron Dessner’s Longpond studio—with the lyrics coming, but still, very slowly, Berninger was encouraged to improvise, with the fragments that worked, or that could be developed further, used as the foundation of building the songs up to what they are on the record.
Frankenstein, neither its first two pages nor the book as a whole, are imperative to a kind of understanding or unlocking The National’s ninth full-length album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein—however, what is imperative to an understanding can be found both within the album’s jaw-dropping, haunting opening track, “Once Upon A Poolside,” as well as a perhaps offhanded quote from Bryce Dessner in NME, where he says, “We’ve said that things felt fragile before, but I think this time was different.”
Spread across 11 songs from a possible 25 that were contenders for the album, First Two Pages is, of course, a band, after well over 20 years of recording and touring at a rigorous pace, finding their way back to one another and res-solidifying their connection to one another in both the space of The National, as an entity, but more importantly, as individuals. And in that journey to find their way back, First Two Pages pushes the band’s sound forward—as they have arguably done with each record since their sophomore album, Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers—the instrumentation and arranging gets a little more precise or ambitious each time out, and Berninger’s confidence and range as a vocalist notably growing.
Arriving four (rather long and difficult) years after the sprawling, honestly a little uneven, and at times rather challenging, I Am Easy to Find, First Two Pages of Frankenstein finds the band working from within where urgency and vibrancy converge with a dark, whispered tension. It is a collection of songs that, within all of the risks and surprising ambition it takes, is one of the band’s most lyrically pensive as a whole in a decade, and musically, even in the moments when the album falters (there are at least two), it is still compelling to hear them work out the right balance in the brooding guitar-focused sound and restraint of albums like Alligator and Boxer, with the robust, orchestral flourishes and skittering synthetic textures of drum programming and keyboards that they have been incorporating over the last few releases.
It’s a powerful, often dramatic, and bombastic statement from the moment it begins, and it is unrelenting in the kind of stark, humbling personal reflections Berninger ruminates on his lyricism—unflinching and unflattering, but done so with a devastating and desperate self-effacing beauty and grace.
*
I was suffering more than I let on…
My initial thought, upon the announcement in January of this year, that The National would be releasing a new album at the end of April was a pang of disappointment—not at the prospect of the album itself, or even in its jittery and anthemic first single, “Tropic Morning News,” but at what the album—perhaps more accurately, what the tracklist to First Two Pages of Frankenstein, was notably lacking, which was the song “Weird Goodbyes.”
Released as a single in August of 2022, to both coincide with the summer tour the band had embarked on (it was one of a handful of new songs they were testing on the road), as well as a preview of what they were working on in the studio—the glitchy, somber, and melancholic “Weird Goodbyes,” which featured guest vocals from Justin Vernon, implied that a new album was imminent (five months out from an official announcement kind of counts as imminent, sure), but there was also the presumption, now erroneous on my part, that it would find its way into the sequencing of First Two Pages.
Upon its release, “Weird Goodbyes” was (and still is) an extremely important song for me—most obvious is that it marked the return of The National, but personally, the themes of how and why we say goodbye, and the idea of letting go of something, or someone, resonated with me. And as disappointing as it was not to see the song tucked into the 11 that made it onto First Two Pages, even in my first listen through, I did understand why it was ultimately left off, and was given a life of its own, free from the context of an album—given its lyrical themes, there are some that do certainly connect to the other songs included here, but a song that is ultimately about the reluctant acceptance of letting go would have, perhaps, felt out of place within an album that is ultimately about the desperate grasping onto something in order to stay connected.
“Tropic Morning News” was the first of four tunes released in advance of the album’s arrival, and of the 11 on First Two Pages of Frankenstein, it is structurally, in just how enthusiastic and relentless its rhythm is, the kind of song that was intended to be a “big” first single, or preview, of the album—akin to tracks shared prior to the release of Sleep Well Beast, “Day I Die” and “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness,” and the dizzying “You Had Your Soul With You” from I Am Easy to Find.
And like a number of places on First Two Pages, “Tropic Morning News” is a song where there is a collision of sorts between where, sonically, The National has been, and the direction they appear to be going in—a little disorienting, at first, because the further along the song gets, the more and more elements the band piles on, but it inevitably and rather effortlessly marries the kind of “classic” National chugging bass line from Scott Devendorf and subtle, shimmery electric guitar work with the punchy, crisp sound of the drum programming that runs throughout—a textural facet that, I hesitate to say the band has starting to rely on more and more over the course of their last three albums (Aaron Dessner also using it heavily in albums he produces for others), but it does make more appearances than one might think, or want it to, given what an incredible force drummer Bryan Devendorf has always been within The National’s dynamic.
In the way its arranged, “Tropic Morning News” does follow a kind of expected trajectory—it moves at a breakneck pace and gives the band little, if any, breathing room as they build it up from the first verse into the chorus, before eventually loosening their grip and allowing it to soar to the anthemic territory it was very clearly designed to have—complete with a short, yet searing electric guitar solo that is somewhat reminiscent of the fuzzed out ferocity from the solo played in “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness.” It is certainly not First Two Pages’ most beautiful or complex in its arranging, but it doesn’t have to be—the thing that makes it successful is that in how powerful and driving it is, with its chorus put together around an infectious melody, it does a surprisingly good job of masking how bleak and self-deprecating Berninger’s lyricism is throughout.
Anxieties of various kinds have found their way into Berninger’s writing throughout The National’s canonical work—he is, famously, a terribly anxious frontman, and the irony of his at times, unhinged stage presence as a means of trying to push through his anxieties is never lost on me. And with as human as experiences as anxiety and personal idiosyncrasies can be, his early songwriting was much less direct and extremely vague and shadowy—something that he has really moved away from over the last decade for sure, and “Tropic Morning News” is, even without knowing the long-gestating and difficult process it took Berninger to find his way back to writing for the band, very direct in its lyrics.
“I wasn’t starting yet—I didn’t even think you were listening,” Berninger begins, breathlessly, in what unfolds like a kind of nervous, stream-of-conscious diatribe. “I wasn’t ready at all to say anything interesting. It’s a thing you have—you just don’t know that you do it. You wait around in a conversation while I get in and start stumbling through it.”
And admitting that one is terrible within conversations, or social gatherings, is one thing, and inherently not exactly bleak or some kind of dark confession, but that is the contrast that occurs within the chorus—while the band lifts the music up higher and higher, and more exuberant in sound, Berninger pulls himself further and further below in his depiction: “When all my thinking got mangled and I caught myself talking myself off the ceiling,” he sings during the second chorus. “I was suffering more than I let on—the tropic morning news was on. There’s nothing stopping me now from saying all the painful parts out loud.”
*
Featured artists, or guests, are nothing new for The National—the group has welcomed several different voices, in varying capacities, since High Violet, which included contributions from Sufjan Stevens and Justin Vernon. Later, on the one-off single, “Think You Can Wait,” it was the brooding appearance of Sharon Van Etten echoing throughout the chorus, then two years later, on Trouble Will Find Me, you could hear Annie Clark and Jenn Wasner.
I Am Easy to Find, both as an album as well as a companion piece to a short film from Mike Mills, starring Alicia Vikander (who also appears on the cover of the album), included the most additional vocal contributions thus far—all from a large cast of women, including Lisa Hannigan, and Gail Ann Dorsey, among others.
First Two Pages also features a handful of guests, or additional vocalists—though this is the first time the band has credited those performers parenthetically within the song titles. The biggest name included, and the name that will probably attract a fair amount of attention to the album, is the appearance of Taylor Swift, who appears on “The Alcott,” the track she co-wrote, that is sequenced at the top of First Two Pages’ second half; Sufjan Stevens returns, providing ethereal layers of backing vocals to the stunning opening track, “Once Upon A Poolside”; and Phoebe Bridgers, who also could be heard on Berninger’s solo track, “Walking on A String,” in 2019, appears here on two songs: the final single released in advance of the album, “Your Mind is Not Your Friend,” and “This Isn’t Helping.”
I am uncertain what I was anticipating, or maybe even hoping, from Bridgers in either song—but her appearances, in both instances, are relegated to providing backing vocals within each respective chorus, rather than a back-and-forth with Berninger. And that is fine, I suppose—her voice assists in crafting an additional layer of robustness, albeit subtle, in each tune, but there is a part of me that, much like her contribution to SZA’s “Ghost in The Machine” at the end of 2022, feels like Bridgers is being slightly underutilized within these opportunities, like I wish she were given more to do.
Musically, “This Isn’t Helping,” like myriad other songs on First Two Pages, works to close the gap between the kind of “classic” National sound, and the inclusion of, in this case specifically, a blippy, antiquated-sounding synthesizer ripple that you can hear as the song begins, before the cavernous, mournful piano chords begin ringing out, and the slowly strummed acoustic guitar falls in step along with it—then, eventually bringing in the tumbling percussion from Devendorf, and an icy, creeping string arrangement that cuts through the fabric of the song’s slow-burning atmosphere.
Something that I read once, a number of years ago, about The National—to be more specific, the run of albums from Alligator to High Violet, and something that has become a regular thing I wind up writing about, is the balance of tension and release within contemporary popular music, and how, according to the band, Alligator, as an album, was all release, with little if any tension, and Boxer, in turn, was all tension with no release—and since then I think they have been a little more thoughtful or deliberate in efforts to strike a balance between those two extremes in their dynamism, which you can hear throughout First Two Pages, and often hear the kind of give and take even occurring within a single song.
“This Isn’t Helping,” as it begins to slowly build, never reaches a kind of cathartic, or cacophonic height, but the pensive, inward tensions of the opening verses are eventually pushed out into enough of a release by the time it reaches the arresting, surprising bridge, where not only does the music rise, but the tone of Berninger’s voice does as well, to the point of sounding like a desperate yelp. “But would your life be so bad if you knew every single thought I had?” he asks. “‘Cause I only have two things to say to you, but you say two things bout everything, babe,” he continues. “Well, just when I thought you don’t even notice me at all.”
There is a sneering disdain and resentment to Berninger’s volatile lyrics in “This Isn’t Helping,” giving it a startling, borderline argumentative tone. Even when it opens with a line that ultimately becomes a little cloying, it gives way to something with much more heft: “It isn’t fair how you never look like you’re trying, as if you couldn’t care less,” he mumbles in his trademark, ringing baritone. “And I’m here, kicking myself to keep from crying—you say you’re impressed.”
I spent a large portion of my piece on “Weird Goodbyes,” talking about when, throughout their canonical work when The National—specifically in their lyricism, is self-referential, or creates a callback to a lyric found on a song in an older album. There is some speculation (if you are to count one comment from a user on Genius as speculation) that the opening to “This Isn’t Helping”’s second verse is a reference to the title, and titular track from I Am Easy to Find—“You say this doesn’t have to hurt—you’re there if you need to be found,” Berninger sings, his voice beginning to rise. “Can’t you see that that makes it so much worse—I’ll always see you around.”
There is also, here, as Berninger, with the assistance from Bridgers, slides into the chorus, what could be a reference to the High Violet-era b-side, “You Were A Kindness”: “This isn’t helping at all,” the two voices sing. “I know you think it’s kindness, but it’s not.”
And lines from this song—specifically, “I know you think it’s kindness, but it’s not,” and “Can’t you see that that makes it so much worse,” as well as the titular phrase, touch on an important facet of both living with depression, and living with someone who is dealing with depression, that I do not feel is discussed all that often, which is just how insular and difficult it can make you, sometimes without you even realizing it.
You inevitably can appear a lot colder, or crueler than you mean to be—irritated by every little thing, and can push someone away, or withdraw even further, even when the intentions of help, or kindness, are well meant.
Bridgers’ other appearance on First Two Pages of Frankenstein is in the penultimate track, “Your Mind is Not Your Friend”—a song that does away with some of the need for a cathartic release or rush of “This Isn’t Helping,” and is comfortable operating from within a holding pattern with its brooding, woozy tension—another kind of “classic” National sound.
I would never say the piano melody to “Your Mind” is “jaunty,” but plunked out on an ancient-sounding upright, there is a playfulness, or a slight glimmer of whimsy in how it tumbles out as the other elements of the song are slowly introduced by the end of the first chorus, and in some regard, casting a shadow over the original feeling before Berninger’s voice quietly creeps in, including extremely measured and crisp sounding snare hits, and swirling flourishes of both organic sounds from the orchestral accompaniment, and synthetic from the atmospheric textures and tones that cascade just underneath it all.
“Your Mind,” and it should be rather apparent based on the title alone, is one of the more personal, and much harder to hear songs, lyrically, on First Two Pages—with Berninger being rather direct in how he reflects on his long struggle with writer’s block and the endless depressive spiral it sent him on. “Your imagination is an awful place,” he begins, in one of the more attention-grabbing opening lines I have heard in recent memory.
Later on, Berninger moves away slightly from how literal the interpretation of the song can be as he guides it into both the bridge and third and final verse—“You inherited a fortune from your mother’s side,” he confesses, in a darkly funny reference to the unfortunate genetic predisposition to mental illness that is often passed along from parents to their children; then, he, albeit briefly, and rather ambiguous in how it arrives, references some of the words found within the first two pages of Frankenstein—juxtaposing Mary Shelley’s lines, “…for nothing constitutes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose,” and “I have read with ardor the accounts of various voyages which have been made in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean through the seas which surround the pole,” with his own drear observations on his experience: “Tranquilize the oceans between the poles. You’re clawing under rocks and climbing into holes.”
The way the song is directed at what is apparently an off-stage, you are ultimately Berninger addressing himself—an effective device within the conceit of the song as a very small flicker of hope, and his wife Carin Besser, who often co-writes and contributes lyrics, asserted the titular expression to him during what ended up being an extremely long and difficult time—“This isn’t you, this isn’t real, this is just your brain right now,” was her advice to him, as explained in an interview with Uncut. “Your mind is not your friend.”
Your mind is not your friend again
It takes you by the hand and leads you nowhere.
*
I feel like Josh Gondleman was behind this joke, quite a while ago, on Twitter, and I don’t remember it exactly, but it was something to the effect of believing every National song to be about something abstract or dark but that they inevitably end up being about “I love my wife so much, and I am afraid she’s going to leave me.”
There was a time, early in the band’s career, and canon, when Matt Berninger’s lyrics were extraordinarily literate—but were dark and abstract, often vague and fragmented in how they arrived within the song. There was something poetic about them, sure, but there was this murky ambiguity to a majority of them that left a lot of them open to numerous interpretations.
Around the time of High Violet, and into Trouble Will Find Me, Berninger began to slowly pull further and further away from that kind of lyric writing. The songs didn’t become totally literal, or completely direct, but the very shadowy days of strange and curious lines like, “I had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain,” or “We throw money at each other and cry,” were gone.
I am hesitant to refer to any of The National’s songs as “love songs,” but the argument could be made that many of them are in a non-traditional sense of the expression. If anything, many of them—like “Guilty Party” or “Hairpin Turns” is, even in the fine line that is walked between the literal and the figurative, are about the difficulties of loving someone who is extremely difficult to love, or just difficult, for whatever reason, and about being as aware as you can be of your own shortcomings, and how those might impact your relationship with others.
And how, outside of being aware, you are uncertain what, if anything, to do about them.
Sequenced back to back on First Two Pages of Frankenstein, and both released as advance singles in the months leading up to the album in full, “New Order T-Shirt” and “Eucalyptus,” two high points on the record, both lyrically and musically, are polar opposites on the spectrum of a “love song” from The National—one is a melancholic, though extraordinarily sentimental, look back at the early days of Berninger’s relationship with his wife, Carin Besser; the other is a dramatized and fictionalized depiction of the angst and animosity that comes from a couple trying to split up their possessions.
Berninger can be a lot of things as a lyricist—and being overly tender or saccharine is not a place he often writes from, but it occurs twice on First Two Pages, and is the most successfully executed in one of those moments (apologies to anyone who likes the album’s closing track.) Every element of “New Order T-Shirt” is gentle—one of the most overtly delicate and restrained songs The National has put together that, in how it is arranged, impressively plays against type in the momentum it skips and skitters forward with, as not to become something too slow or ballad-y based on the bittersweet weight of the imagery it contains.
The band, now all geographically separated, have been at it for long enough and have made enough of a name for themselves that their origin is no longer something that is discussed when they are brought up—all originally from Cincinnati, the members of The National reconnected in Brooklyn at the tail end of the dot com era in 1999 and 2000, and the New York City of that era, and the earliest days of the group, set the stage for Berninger’s narrative on “New Order T-Shirt.”
Set against a bouncy synthesizer that pings and glistens just underneath all of the other elements within the song, there is a surprising groove to “New Order T-Shirt” once it gets going—structured around tightly plucked acoustic guitar strings, and the proper balance of the glitchy sounding electronic percussive elements blending with Bryan Devendorf’s powerful drumming. And it is beautiful, sure, in just how restrained and touching it all sounds, but it is Berninger’s knack for a narrative that makes “New Order T-Shirt” as compelling of a song as it is, where he finds humor in an otherwise tense situation of being stopped by customs well over a decade ago for bringing clock that unfortunately looked like a bomb in his luggage, and tactfully describes the feeling of living in New York in the moments leading up to September 11th, 2001, delivered in a breathless, dizzying first verse: “How you tapped on a box of blue American Spirits at the Anyway Cafe a little under a month before the ashes and management capital files filled the streets,” he reminisces. “How we wove from the cones walking home to the place on Atlantic you shared with your hilarious sister—kicking off your black flats, demolished and laughing.”
Berninger lingers on the memory like the way one would linger while looking at an old photograph—just long enough to be wistful, and just long enough within the context of the song, to create an extraordinarily vivid image if this part of his life when he was young and first falling in love. He does something similar with the phrase turn that incorporates the titular shirt—“You in my New Order t-shirt, holding a cat and a glass of beer.”
As these memories, and anecdotes continue to flash through, the bittersweet or melancholic feeling attached to them, or simply attached to this kind of reminiscing, rises to the surface of the song in the bridge, where the song does take a brief, though sudden shift, into the aforementioned, “I am worried my wife is going to leave me” territory: “You in a bath on the phone, telling somebody that maybe they’re better off leaving than staying in it alone,” Berninger sings, in a register and cadence that suggests anxiety—he takes a similar tone in one of the more affecting and identifiable memories he chooses to share in the song, during the third verse.
“When you cried at the beach and recovered in seconds and said everything’s fine, but I knew that it wasn’t,” he recalls. “Then you stayed out of reach from me for almost a year.”
These kind of anxieties, and domestic discourses recede though, as he returns to the sentential conceit within the chorus: “I keep what I can of you…I carry them with me like drugs in a pocket.”
The opposite end of this sentimentality and wistfulness is the visceral contention in “Eucalyptus,” placed second within the album’s running, and doesn’t kickstart First Two Pages’ momentum, but does push it off a little further from the wall after the haunting, slow-burning prologue that serves as its opening track.
“Eucalyptus” is another moment in the album where the instrumentation is familiar enough to those who have followed The National for the bulk of their career and understood the growth that they have gone through—the attempts at carrying over elements from their earlier material into the sound that they have worked to develop in recent years. It, like “New Order T-Shirt,” uses a blend of both programmed, or electronic percussion, as well as live drum kit—noticeably, the snare hits that ricochet in the second verse, and the rhythm itself, from the moment it begins, is low and rumbling, while snarling, distorted electric guitar notes tumble down on top of it, crafting a fittingly dark, and ominous atmosphere.
The tone Berninger takes in “Eucalyptus” shifts back and forth between frustration and desperation—the verses find him rattling off a list of possessions, more or less incapable of understanding how to split them up in the wake of a relationship’s demise, as well as wondering if there is any way to salvage things. “What about the undeveloped cameras?,” he asks before countering with, “Maybe we should bury these.”
Then later, “What if we moved back to New York?,” and “What if I reinvented again?”
All of these questions, and pleadings, are then met with a figurative throwing up of his hands and throwing in the towel, as it were, with the anguish found in the chorus: “You should take it, ‘cause I’m not gonna take it. You should take it, I’m only gonna break it.”
*
And I suppose it isn’t all that surprising that First Two Pages of Frankenstein does feature an appearance by Taylor Swift—even with as huge of a marquee name as she is, Swift has spent a lot of the last three years working closely with Aaron Dessner (including her guest turns on his Big Red Machine album from 2021), and The National were featured performers on the song “Coney Island,” found on the second of her two albums released in 2020, Evermore.
So it makes sense that she would turn up, but until the album, during my first listen, reached “The Alcott,” I was uncertain as to what capacity she would be featured.
I would, and could, say that I did not know what to anticipate from their collaboration on First Two Pages, but I don’t think that is necessarily true—I think what I wanted, or was hoping for, and was really only able to clearly articulate this after sitting with the song (and the album) for a number of days, was what perhaps you, too, were hoping for—“Coney Island Pt. 2,” which it isn’t, neither in its arranging nor in the give and take between Swift and Berninger.
While “Coney Island” was firmly planted within a restrained hush—rarely, if ever, rising above that, with the instrumentation gently floating and circling around (I could honestly listen to an instrumental version of that song all day if there were one), “The Alcott” is not exactly the anthesis, but it does push the band into someplace much more sweeping, bombastic, and theatrical in sound—all of those things they certainly have done in the past, yes, but for some reason, and maybe it is the weight of Swift’s name attached to the song, the stakes seem much higher this time around.
Maybe the easiest way to describe it is that if “Coney Island” sounded like Taylor Swift singing a National song, “The Alcott” is The National singing a Taylor Swift song, if that makes sense at all, and isn’t entirely too much of a reach as means of explanation.
Deliberately paced—not glacially, but it does burn slower than any other song on First Two Pages, the band does not waste any of that time in their efforts to concur the dramatic and the grand within “The Alcott.” It opens with huge, cavernous, piano chords, ringing out while guitars quietly twinkle and shimmer, and lush-sounding strings make their way across all of it, spending its first two verses slowly introducing additional elements, like the muted, electronic, percussive pulsing that ripples underneath, eventually giving way to Devendorf’s drumming when the song reaches its swooning climax.
“Coney Island,” its lyrics written by Swift alone, contained myriad nods and winks to the listener in terms of what it referenced—namely, fabled situations with former romantic partners, like an accident, missing out on a birthday, and forgetting to thank someone during an acceptance speech, with Berninger not so much playing foil to Swift in the context of the song, but the two of them were never exactly working together, or toward one another, but rather, inadvertently pushing one another away and then wondering why it was occurring.
Both Berninger and Swift are credited as writers of “The Alcott,” and lyrically, it blurs the line between fiction and creative non-fiction in the narrative the two build.
I am hesitant, again, to refer to any National song as a “love song,” though out of all the songs on First Two Pages, if one could be considered a love song, or love song adjacent, it would be “The Alcott”—rather than the two main characters circling one another and never figuring out where it went wrong, as Swift and Berninger depicted on “Coney Island,” their voices and respective narratives blend to portray the trepidation and anxieties surrounding the possibility of a second chance when things appear to have already fallen apart one too many times.
The song begins at the titular location—what Berninger describes as a hotel bar where he nervously approaches someone—a woman, loosely and allegedly based on his wife—with whom he has amends he needs to make, while she sits in a booth, near the back, writing in a golden notebook (a Swiftian detail if I have ever heard one), “Writing something about someone who used to be me,” he somberly admits before he and swift arrive at the chorus.
“The Alcott,” as the sense of drama builds and the arranging, which is inherently gorgeous, swoons, Berninger delivers some of the more self-deprecating, unflattering, and apologetic lines on the album: “And the last thing you wanted is the first thing I do,” he and Swift both sing in the song’s chorus, and then later in the bridge, he repeats, “I’ll ruin it all over—I’ll ruin it for you…just like I always do,” with the urgency and desperation of a penance, while Swift weaves her voice in and out of his, which is something she also does within the second verse.
And it’s an interesting (genuinely interesting) choice in terms of structuring the song—“The Alcott,” itself, was apparently written and then sent to Swift to see if there was anything she was interested in contributing lyrically, and apparently found the spaces that Berninger left within the song (intentional or otherwise) for another voice to serve as a response to his sorrowful pleadings.
In some cases, it works—like when Berninger sings the line, “Tell me your problems and I tell you the truth,” Swift interjects with the aside, “Have I become one of your problems?,” in between while Berninger takes the briefest of pauses, but in other cases, especially in the bridge where it turns into less of a back and forth and more of a fight for dominance within the narrative, even with as infectious as the melody is written and how it does kind of take a hold of you in the swaying rhythm formed, it becomes simply too much—too overwhelming of a moment held, where, in the admission of falling back in love with a person, there is no resolution from those tensions that have been created.
*
“I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation; I imagined I might also obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Home and Shakespeare are consecrated. You are well acquainted with my failure, and how heavily I bored the disappointment.”
The first two pages of Frankenstein are a letter—or, rather, are written as if they were from a letter.
Like, the book, Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley and published in 1818—the entire book itself was written as, yes, what is ultimately a cautionary tale, but also as if it were a series of letters—it’s a literary device called an “epistolary,” which then creates a secondary device where one part of the narrative becomes a “frame story” for another.
It’s a literary device called an “epistolary,” which then creates a secondary device where one part of the narrative becomes a “frame story” for another.
I have never read Frankenstein, and a number of years ago, my wife did, and when she relayed to me, recently, that she had thought it was boring, what she had to keep in mind, and perhaps had a difficulty doing so while reading it, was that when it was published 200 years ago, it was probably not boring at all—and that, at the time, it was more than likely rather frightening, or shocking to read, but not at all by today’s standards for “horror” or genre fiction.
But her boredom with it came from how much of the book, within the frame story, is about, as she put it, “chasing the monster.”
Chasing the monster.
There was a time, in the year that I was first really getting into The National, and finding every interview with Matt Berninger I could in magazines, or online, where he would often be asked—perhaps because of how literate his lyricism was in the Alligator days, or perhaps because his wife Carin Besser was a fiction editor for The New Yorker—what books he was reading, and I would make a point to read anything he mentioned.
Some of them were quite incredible discoveries, like Joan Didion’s classic novel Play it As it Lays, or the mischievous whimsy of Jonathan Ames’ Wake Up, Sir!; though some of them were a little less interesting to me, like Cynthia Ozick’s Heir to The Glimmering World.
So it makes sense to me that it was a book—Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, that began helping Berninger out of his writer’s block, and the subsequent depressive state he had fallen into because of it, and I find it fitting that it was a book about “chasing the monster” that did it.
Chasing the monster.
Sometimes the monster chases us back.
And there is a line, of course, between how much we put in, or give, toward something as we continue to pursue it, even if we are not struggling with it evading us, with how much we receive in return.
And there is, of course, how much it ultimately takes from us over time.
*
And maybe I am the wrong person to be writing about The National—and if maybe I am not the right person, maybe I am not the kind of person, or writer, who should be taken seriously, or looked toward as someone providing objectivity in the field of music criticism and analysis.
Writing about anything with objectivity is difficult—I am remiss to say that anyone can do it, but maybe others might have an easier time with it than I did, in terms of removing themselves completely from something they were writing, and simply presenting the facts.
To present those facts, or somebody else’s narrative, in a way that you are both removed from and yet remains compelling to read, is something that requires a lot of practice, and it was something I eventually learned how to do it.
That doesn’t mean I want to write about music that way. I can do it, sure, and have done it.
That doesn’t mean I am happy with the pieces, in the end.
There’s a reason I, for the last four or five years—maybe even longer, have tried to only write pieces about albums that I genuinely enjoy, often from artists I have followed for a long time, or at the very least, write about an album that makes me feel something, and that I have something to say, or offer up, as a response to it.
A fault of mine as a music writer, and a trope I often fall into simply because I am often writing about an album for a number of days2, or weeks, following its release, is that, as other reviews or opinions about an album are published, I find it becomes harder and harder, especially if it is something I disagree with, not to “review the review.”
This may be a bit of a generalization, but since the release of Alligator, and certainly since Boxer, The National’s albums are more or less well received by music writers—however, First Two Pages of Frankenstein, in the days prior to its arrival, while lauded by both NME and Rolling Stone, it was somewhat dismissively panned by Pitchfork (once champions of the band as their profile began to rise 15 years ago) as well as on Stereogum.
A few days after its release, New York Magazine (and Vulture) published a review in the form of an opinion piece titled, “The National Are Now A Parody Act.”
The write-up from Pitchfork is not unkind—not exactly, but it is certainly not glowing, and the numerical score that accompanied the review reflects that (6.6 out of 10), with writer Brad Shoup calling First Two Pages the band’s gentlest album to date (which is a fair enough assessment) and also points out the “sheepishly reticent” drumming from Bryan Devendorf (again, fair), and the usage of its guest performers (specifically Bridgers) as providing nothing more than “vocal coloration” and what is more or less moral support.
Again, fair. And honestly, I do agree—both appearances by Phoebe Bridgers can easily be seen as underusing her within the songs, and it is frustrating that, within the last three National albums, the group has slowly been working more electronic percussive elements in, when Devendorf’s work behind the drum kit is one of the things that, during their mid to late 2000s run of albums, made them so invigorating to listen to.
The days of a snarky3 Pitchfork review are more or less over, though, and have been for quite some time—they, as a whole, take themselves entirely too seriously. However, Stereogum is not in that position, and is often on the opposite end of that spectrum in the sense that they do not take themselves, or how they write about music, seriously at all.
The problems I have had with Stereogum4—specifically the quality of the writing and the candor of the writing on the site are quite honestly too numerous to mention, but in their assessment of First Two Pages, writer Chris DeVille makes a lot of the same points that other evaluations of the album have made, but he does so with a haughty, vitriolic smirk to the reader in his tone.
“How can you tell you’re washed when so much of your greatest music is about being washed?,” he asks, before describing the album, later on, as “fine.” “If you already dislike The National or believe they fell off a long time ago,” he continues. “Frankenstein will absolutely not change your mind.”
DeVille’s take on the album, which he does admit the further along he was writing, is that he slowly began to enjoy it more than during the initial listen, or at least when he first sat down and began writing, but regardless, he concedes it is “not better than fine,” before adding that The National appears to be doing a “slightly inferior version of that thing they do so well.”
The piece from New York Magazine and Vulture, penned by James Robins, who is someone that seems to have never written about music before, professionally, while lauding Berninger’s early, and misogynistic lyrics from the Alligator and Boxer days, feels that the “hope, humor, and earnest they once prized has been pawned for a brand of insipid and guileless mopery.”
“Mistaken for a generic ‘sad dad band’ for so long,” Robins continues. “The National’s face has grown to fit the mask.”
The curious thing about Robins’ piece is how he concludes by saying in his final paragraph, “Once a cure for melancholy, The National now feels like a cause.”
Maybe I missed something, but I don’t believe that The National was, or ever touted themselves to be, a “cure for melancholy.”
And maybe I am the wrong person to be writing about The National, simply because I have been a listener, and a fan, for so long.
Admittedly, First Two Pages of Frankenstein is not a perfect, or flawless album—I never said it was. And some moments absolutely do not work at all, there are moments that capture a flash of the unhinged, ramshackle explosiveness of The National’s earlier days, and there are moments that are, for myriad reasons, are memorable, beautiful, and utterly devastating.
It’s the product of a difficult few years for the band, and therefore, it is a difficult record. That doesn’t mean that it is bad.
It is better than “fine.” It is worth more than a 6.6. It is not a parody.
In the perhaps audacious comparison of The National to Radiohead, something that goes along with the growth and change in sound each band has experienced is the changing roles certain members play—during the sessions for Kid A and Amnesiac, drummer Phil Selway and guitarist Ed O’Brien were originally rather distraught at the notion that there would be songs they might not be playing on.
The same could be said here, and over the last six years, as The National has incorporated more and more drum programming or electronically created beats—there are often still additional percussive elements provided by Bryan Devendorf, but his reduced role is very apparent on First Two Pages.
And while he is, to my knowledge, not yet as loathed of a producer and collaborator as Jack Antonoff is in various pockets of the internet, I feel like Aaron Dessner’s production and arranging can be polarizing for a number of reasons to different listeners—if anything, I think he is growing more confident and more daring in his work behind the scenes, and I think this speaks to the larger issue with the criticism of the band’s last few albums, as well as their sound and aesthetic as a whole in 2023.
Musicians and artists already give so much, and what we, as listeners, do is engage, yes, sure, but we also take, and at times we can be extraordinarily demanding. The truth is that The National didn’t owe us another album—they didn’t really owe us anything, honestly. The band was on the verge of calling it a day because of Berninger’s bout with writer’s block, and if they had put an end to things, they had a run of two decades, which is a lot longer and has seen a lot more successes than any number of other New York adjacent, buzzed about on blogs outfits that came up in the mid-2000s.
You can long for a band to return to a specific sound, or to try and repeat the formula that worked for your favorite album of theirs—you can want a Boxer II or another High Violet, but The National has continued to evolve as a group. And as they have evolved into something much larger than even they probably anticipated—and there is the risk that First Two Pages of Frankenstein is an album that may alienate some listeners that have not grown, or evolved along with the band.
This isn’t a perfect album, at least not to me, but ultimately I feel like that should not determine as to whether or not they are “washed” as a group.
*
Somewhat recently, I was trying to explain a specific feeling, or state of being, to a friend.
I think I had, perhaps a little too dramatically, described it initially as feeling like I was fading away, and then elaborated by saying that, in living with as severe and debilitating depression as I do, it often feels like there is a curtain that has been lowered between myself and, like, everything around me, certainly, but the thing that I was trying to get at was what it is like when the curtain has been lowered and separates me from other people.
Perhaps a flimsy metaphor, or something that seems like I would overextend it in use, the curtain itself is heavy, but even with its weight, both literal and figurative, I am still aware of what, or in many cases, who, is on the other side.
I am simply just unable to connect.
What was the worried thing you said to me?
One could make an argument that The National has a history of attention-grabbing opening tracks, regardless of their tone—the opening cymbal crash, and dark, claustrophobic swaying of “Secret Meeting” from Alligator, the rollicking piano progression at the beginning of “Fake Empire,” which gives way to a triumphant kind of pomp and circumstance, or the chaotic, torrential ferocity of “Terrible Love.”
These are all iconic songs within the band’s now rather large catalog, and I would argue that, like First Two Pages, their first foray into merging glitchy, antiquated electronics with their bombastic, brooding guitar-focused indie rock, Sleep Well Beast, had as equally of an attention-grabbing, and intentionally slow-burning, opening track in the hushed “Nobody Else Will Be There,” which detailed, among other things, Berninger’s frustration with long, awkward goodbyes while attempting to leave a party.
What was the worried thing you said to me?
Even if you didn’t know the backstory behind the long-gestating creation of First Two Pages of Frankenstein, it is spelled out, quite literally in some regard, in the album’s opening track—“Once Upon A Poolside,” which, tonally, works as a prologue for the album and gently (and emotionally) ushers the listeners into the rest of the album.
The National has certainly written highly emotional, or emotionally charged, songs in the past. And, again, maybe I am not the right person to be writing about this band, or this album, simply because even when I can see where their material can falter, or nod my head politely in agreement with some of the critical assessments, I have such a long history with them, and many of their emotional, or emotionally charged songs, often written in an unflinching and unflattering way that I catch a very clear though hard to look at the reflection of myself in.
“Once Upon A Poolside” is one of those songs, and without hyperbole, I would say that it is the most emotionally charged they have ever been in their career thus far. There is really nothing quite like it, in its sparse, haunting delicacy, and its frankness, in their catalog, and because of the sheer emotional weight of it, I would hope that they do not feel compelled to make another song like it again, because as much as I “like” it, or at least feel compelled to continue listening over, and over, as an act of emotional terrorism on committed to myself and my fragile mental health, I do not think I could handle anything else that unfolds so beautifully and so harrowingly.
What was the worried thing you said to me?
In terms of the arranging of “Once Upon A Poolside,” comparatively to literally anything else on First Two Pages, there is very little going on—it isn’t “sparse,” exactly, but it is quite skeletal, strutted around the emotionally wrought piano, with minor, understated atmospherics surging through, just underneath.
It is beautiful, as an instrumental, but the song itself hinges on, and only really has the kind of personally affecting gravity that it ultimately has because of Berninger’s lyricism, and how he pulls no punches in the way he delivers his vocals—fragile, and on the verge of shattering.
Any song that begins with the first line of “Once Upon A Poolside” does know what it's doing—even as pensive lyrically and musically gentle as it is, the song itself holds nothing back in what it tries to work through, but like a number of the other songs on the album, there is little if any resolve as it comes to an end.
“Don’t make this any harder, everybody’s waiting,” Berninger begins, his familiar baritone finding its way into the melody plunked out underneath on the piano, before shuffling back and forth between different, vivid portraits of different, and increasingly difficult-to-manage situations he has found himself in. “Walk on’s almost over,” he adds to the end of the first line, capturing the frustration that his bandmates have certainly felt over time, and especially within the last year as The National re-grouped to record and tour, and putting you there in a darkened backstage area alongside him while he nervously hesitates to step out onto the stage.
From there, in the second verse, he is seemingly trailing behind his wife, and as he does so, is uncertain how she’s able to maintain the enthusiasm needed to be charming or affable in a social situation—“I’ll follow you everywhere, while you work the room,” he says, before adding, “I don’t know how you do it…,” before retreating to the comfort of self-deprecation, in one of the more sobering lines of the song: “I’m not doing anyone any kind of favors, watchin’ airplanes land and sink into the pavement.”
In the way the lyrics are structured, and at least in how they are identified in terms of their components on Genius, there are two bridges in “Once Upon A Poolside”—both of which contain what are perhaps the more unflattering and difficult to face self-observations and admissions.
“I can’t keep talking, I can’t stop shaking,” Berninger explains in a voice that sounds like it is just about to shatter. “I can’t keep track of everything I’m taking. Everything is different, why do I feel the same?,” he asks, to which, like questions asked later on, there is no answer.
“Am I asking for too much? I can’t hear what you’re saying.”
And there are, of course, the very literal meanings behind a few of these lines, but there are a few that seem like there is an additional means of extra emotional heft placed on them. The, “I can’t keep track of everything I’m taking,” is one of them, as is the line that begins the song’s second bridge, and then is repeated just a few lines later: “This is the closest we’ve ever been.”
Taken within the context of the song itself, as well as the larger conceit behind First Two Pages of Frankenstein, the line, “I can’t keep track of everything I’m taking,” can be, and more than likely is, about the amount of prescription antidepressants that one in such a state as Berninger was in, could be consuming, but it could—and perhaps this is me editorializing a little, or reading far too much into a double meaning that simply isn’t there, based on my own experiences—be about what we selfishly take from others when we are struggling with a mental health crisis, and how we, usually completely unaware that we are doing it, become incredibly insular, pushing others further and further away, or if not pushing them away, treating them much poorer than we otherwise would.
Given how open the band has been during interviews leading up to the release of First Two Pages, the question of if The National could continue with the state that Beringer was in during 2020 and into 2021, the lines, “This is the closest we’ve ever been—and I have no idea what’s happening. Is this how this whole thing is gonna end?,” have a rather easy interpretation, but there is something else within the line, “This is the closest we’ve ever been.” And yes, there is the additionally easy interpretation that in coming back together to record this album, the band felt more connected as individuals rather than, like, co-workers—but there’s something in between those two potential meanings that is difficult to articulate, but there is the risk, at times, in an interpersonal closeness that could become too much, and it does turn into something that could bring about its own demise.
What was the worried thing you said to me?
And there are times, of course, when this figurative curtain of depression—this feeling like one is fading away from their connection to others, lifts slightly, or if anything, they do not feel as heavy to navigate your way around, and out of temporarily. There are the moments when you are not making it any harder, and you aren’t keeping anyone waiting.
The moments when you can hold your own and find it within to be charming at a party.
The moments when you are able to find the words, and you are, for once, not as selfish, or no longer keeping someone at an arm’s length.
The curtain will fall, again, though. Because it always does.
What was the worried thing you said to me?
*
I can remember around the time that Trouble Will Find Me was released in a decade ago that, in an interview with the band, Matt Berninger had, perhaps offhandedly, that he was uncertain how much longer The National could keep going—at that point, they had been a band for a little over 14 years, and the success they found and the size of listenership and audiences they had attracted, especially in the years following High Violet I think far surpassed anything they had ever dreamed when they were young, all working day jobs in and around New York City, and fumbling through finding their sound, or the right kind of aesthetic, which is what you can hear happening on both their self-titled debut, and on its follow up form 2003, Sad Song for Dirty Lovers.
I struggled with Trouble Will Find Me when it came out, and I still do—it does contain one of my favorite (for personal reasons) National songs (“Pink Rabbits”), and there are tunes on it that are impressive and memorable, like the dark sentimentality behind “I Need My Girl.” But as a whole, if the band’s first two efforts were a newly formed band figuring themselves out, Trouble Will Find Me is a band, well over a decade in, trying to figure out what came next after achieving somewhat surprising and towering highs—it is the most middle of the road album they’ve made thus far.
And I remember that, when I read the quote from Berninger, prophesying that the band could, in fact, end, it was upsetting.
I don’t know how I would have felt if the band would have, in fact, called it a day in the wake of Berninger’s writer’s block during the initial onset of the pandemic—disappointed, sure, but we have to try, as difficult as it might be, to accept that things we are invested in both can end, or can change.
I am the wrong person to be writing something about The National, maybe, because of my long history and fondness for the band, and a deep, personal, reflective connection to a number of their songs and albums—but even if I am not the right person to provide any kind of objective insight into First Two Pages of Frankenstein, what I can do is understand where some of, some of, the criticism for the album is coming from—there are moments when it does truly stumble (“Alien,” peace and love, is among the worst songs they’ve ever put together), there are moments when it falters, there are moments when it works and shows bright, bold flashes of brilliance that you cannot help but want the band to sustain over the whole album, and then there are the moments that are simply incredible, beautiful, and extraordinary in their ability to devastate.
The National is no longer a band that needs or should feel like they have to make some kind of bold artistic statement each time out, but what they’ve done with First Two Pages of Frankenstein is create a bold personal statement instead. Even in how difficult and, at times, impossible it might have seemed, they’ve made a record that reflects survival, reconnection, and rebuilding, with even the faintest glimmer of optimism that hasn’t yet faded by the time the album concludes.
1- The joke is, and perhaps you have seen it, the book's final page with an additional handwritten line: “As he drifted away, I could just make out his final words. ‘It’s okay if you call me Frankenstein instead of Frankenstein’s Monster. I really don’t mind.’”
2- In case anyone is curious about how long these things may or may not take, especially within the last few years, an example I would give is that the piece I wrote about the Boygenius album took upwards of three weeks, off and on, to complete. Part of this is because I want to give myself time with the album—like really give myself time to settle into it, rather than writing a knee-jerk, first-listen response and saying, “That’s that on that.” Another part of it is because I do not write for a living—I work two jobs, host and produce two podcasts, and am trying to keep my household running smoothly, so I am often unable to dedicate as much time, in one say, or one sitting, to something as I may like in a best case scenario of a “writing life.”
3- There was a time, in 2006, when Pitchfork published a review that had no text, and it was just an embedded video clip of a monkey urinating into its face. The site, now owned by a media conglomerate, would never do something as audacious as that now, or something even close.
4- I think my biggest problem with the current model of Stereogum as a site stems from a review of Hiding Places, the 2019 album from Billy Woods, that ran as part of Tom Breihan’s rap column, which used to have the questionable name “Status Ain’t Hood.” Regardless of how you or I feel about that, he based the entire intro to his piece on Hiding Places on something that he misunderstood about the album, and even after site users commented about the mistake, and even after Woods himself took to Twitter to point out the error, Breihan offered no correction of any kind. Additionally, the site still runs a column called “Premature Evaluation,” where they review an album before its release—but the junior high boy, dick joke level of the name is embarrassing, to say the least.
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