BOSTON CALLING 2018: The National
THE NATIONAL
Listening to the National with other people feels like doing something private in public. Each of their melancholy tunes addresses a specific type of city-dwelling mid-20s malaise that calls for an intimate listening space (maybe an IKEA bed in a closet-sized apartment). They have an entire song about feeling anxious at a party.
That’s why the festival atmosphere of the National’s Boston Calling set on Friday night felt incongruous at first. By the end of the set, though, the National almost made Harvard Stadium feel small like that closet-sized apartment.
After an introduction by friend-of-the-band Natalie Portman (who curates Boston Calling’s film component), the National opened with “Nobody Else Will Be There,” the first song from their latest album, Sleep Well Beast. Lead singer Matt Berninger sang low and close to the microphone, usually with his hands behind his back or in his pockets, a picture of restraint. But his famous baritone was hoarse, and he was willing to play around more than he does in his flawless recorded vocals. During “Afraid of Everyone,” he screamed “I try not to hurt anybody I like”—a line he delivers calm and smooth on the album version. A little roughness brought bigger energy to morose songs.
The whole band sounds looser live, a relaxation that seems like a natural progression for them—they’ve been simplifying their production since 2010’s bombastic and horn-heavy High Violet. It’s easier to hear how intricate and controlled the songs are this way. “Don’t Swallow the Cap” was a map of trombone hits, repetitive cymbal crashes, and guitar plucks as precise as a metronome. One slip-up and the whole delicate machine falls apart. A monotonous chugging guitar—working more like a drum than a string instrument—drove “Terrible Love,” the satisfying finale to their set.
The highlight of the show was a duet version of “I Need My Girl” with singer/songwriter Maggie Rogers. Rogers’s clear and powerful voice mingled with Berninger’s low rumble to make an intricate harmony rare for the National. The contrast brought a surge of fresh emotion to an already beautiful song.
The band focused on songs from their latest album, but when they reached back in their repertoire, they went for favorites like “Bloodbuzz Ohio” and “Fake Empire,” and ripped into the uncharacteristically up-tempo “Mr. November” from their 2005 album Alligator. The band used the song title on a Barack Obama T-shirt during his first run for president, but this time Berninger joked about a different political connection.
“This was written about President Taft. President Taft, this is for you,” he said. Then he thought about it some more. “I think he was shitty—I think he was a piece of shit.”
The National doesn’t make festival crowds dance, and even a looser, live version is focused on building highly controlled musical clockwork, playing songs with a million moving and interlocking parts. Sure, there’s still room for them to let their proverbial hair down, but if they did, they wouldn’t be the National. Their ability to bring some intimacy to a huge stadium festival shows how powerful their songs are, even at their moodiest.
-Miranda Suarez
SET LIST:
- Nobody Else Will Be There
- The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness
- Walk it Back
- Guilty Party
- Don’t Swallow the Cap
- Afraid of Everyone
- Bloodbuzz Ohio
- I Need My Girl (with Maggie Rogers)
- Day I Die
- Slow Show
- Carin at the Liquor Store
- Graceless
- Fake Empire
- Mr. November
- Terrible Love