National Anthems

 They’ve spent a decade darting through the shadows, but as JJ Dunning finds out, 2010 could see The National take a deserved stride into the limelight…

The National’s highly anticipated new album, ‘High Violet’, is one of the records of 2010 so far. We can’t wait to ask them about it. So get this: “We have a tendency to ramble,” says guitarist Aaron Dessner, “so cut us off if you don’t think it’s going anywhere.” Not the kind of opening salvo you expect from your typical rock stars, is it? We certainly can’t imagine Julian Casablancas or Karen O worrying about boring their interrogators. And yet, nine years ago, when The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs were raining down on us from New York City in a hail of hype, their city-siblings The National were creeping up on the blind side, releasing their self-titled debut via an obscure French label. Now, in a west London hotel, Dessner and frontman Matt Berninger are reflecting on ten years of steadily ascending success, culminating in their new record ‘High Violet’, an album of stately, near perfect balladeering. In the same way that ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ emancipated Elbow from being everyone’s half harboured semi-secret, ‘High Violet’ will surely cast The National into the mainstream limelight in the way that they’ve deserved – but evaded – for so long. But to get to this point, it’s been a long journey, mostly in the back of a van. “With our first record,” explains Aaron, “we organised European tours ourselves, and basically played for no-one, sleeping on floors, and lost money.” There weren’t any tour buses. Instead it was a hired Transit with three of The National in the front, and the other two in the back. With the gear. In the dark. You can sense Aaron wince a little. “We thought there was some swelling underground explosion about to happen,” grins frontman Matt Berninger, admitting that the reality was somewhat less glorious. “But for every dirty-underpanted night in a youth hostel with kids half your age trying to beat the shit out of you,” he explains, “there was a night where somebody came who had the vinyl and knew all the songs and was obsessed and wanted to take pictures with us and have us sign it. There were one or two shining lights.” By the time of their third album, and first through Beggars, ‘Alligator’, in 2005, The National had won through the shower of soiled-grundies, and accrued a serious, dedicated mob of fans. With that album, the critics were next to be enthralled. “With ‘Alligator’” says Matt, “we knew we’d finally set a foot in the door. But we realised that with our next record, we’d have to step it up again.” What followed played up the richness of Berninger’s baritone. The album was ‘Boxer’, a slower, think-piece; in hindsight, a perfect time out of mind between the occasionally screamy ‘Alligator’ and the relentless melody of ‘High Violet’’s regal, slow-pop. “The screamy songs were the ones that got all the attention,” says Matt, “so we kind of rolled the dice with ‘Boxer’ and made a record that didn’t do any of those things, because we were convinced that people liked us for more than just the screaming things – it was about proving ourselves on a whole different level and firmly planting the flag in the ground. It was a gamble. We could have lost the fans of ‘Mr.November’, but it worked, and ‘Boxer’ was embraced. So when we went in to make ‘High Violet’, we realised we could kind of do whatever we wanted. We’d learned that the way we work is so slow, because we pull things apart and we tinker for so long, that building our own studio was the smart thing to do. We can’t spend £1000 a day on a studio with all that tinkering and circling back and forth, and we wanted it to be uglier, more casual sounding, louder, rougher. That is as far as we knew what we were going to do.” Berninger is candid, too, that the band were keen to avoid some of their “old habits”. First single ‘Bloodbuzz Ohio’ caused something of a mini-row within the camp, over a horn section that was too close to ‘Boxer’’s opening track ‘Fake Empire’ (after a wrestle with producer Peter Katis, the brass was eventually removed), whilst the slow-turning mid-album lynchpin ‘Lemonworld’ was nearly axed altogether, a victim of too many laborious re-writes. Luckily, in the end, its melodic brilliance won through. “With ‘High Violet’ it was time to knock it out of the park. To beat ‘Boxer’, beat ‘Alligator’. Time to raise the bar,” says Matt. “For a long time, I focused only on melody, I didn’t think about lyrics for a long, long time. Melody, for me, was the priority for this record.” And it shows. Berninger is all over ‘High Violet’ like a leather-throated rash, leaving scant few moments over which he does not preside in his deep, viscous voice. We think it’s their best, but what do Matt and Aaron think? Is ‘High Violet’ destined to be the high-watermark of a slow-grow career? Matt grins. “There’s always the same line of questioning, ‘Your records are always growers, it seems like you guys are a slow build, word of mouth band’. I mean yeah, we’ve never gotten many big features or high pro_ le media coverage – it’s always been back alley whispers kind of thing that has helped us build a fanbase – but I think that part of the motivation on this record was just to come out slinging hard, just so that when people start the ‘How did you guys…?’ questions we can say ‘Because we’re fucking awesome!’. We’re a bad-assed band! We work our asses off and we write great songs! There’s some of that motivation to just kick the door down and leave it down, and stop having to explain to people how we tricked the world into liking us.” Bin the conspiracy theories – The National are just great, ok?

‘High Violet’ is released on 4AD on May 10th.