The National have always been a band known for their dedication to touring. Even though their latest LP, I Am Easy to Find, sprang seemingly out of nowhere from a film project with director Mike Mills, the band has been on the road for months at a time, touring with a larger ensemble than ever in support of their most sprawling and intricately-orchestrated work yet. The band made a leap into indie rock royalty with 2010’s High Violet, and since then have released three more records refining and tweaking their chamber pop-inspired sound, carried by the unparalleled compositional skills of brothers Bryce and Aaron Dessner, as well as frontman Matt Berninger’s poetic and morose lyrics.
In the span of six years, the band have graduated from playing smaller venues and now command massive audiences in Boston’s largest venues, such as the Wang Theatre and now Agganis Arena. “It looks big, but it doesn’t feel that big,” Berninger says early in the night onstage at the Agganis, and it’s true – though The National have always trafficked in just a smidgen of arena-rock with the way their songs often culminate in the swelling sound of guitars and brass, the intense emotion and quiet of their oeuvre has a way of binding together even the vastest room, compressing it in a kind of somber embrace, drawing people forward and up from their seats as the fog machine fills the room with a mist that absorbs the pastel tones of the stage lights, casting everyone in pink, green, and blue hues.
The post-Boxer period that began with High Violet was the band’s focus of the night, and I Am Easy to Find was the true centerpiece. The band recorded and now tours with a female chorus, and in Boston that group was made of up Mina Tindle, Kate Stables (of This is the Kit), and Eve Owen. Owen takes the lead on ‘Where is Her Head’, an Easy to Find track that begins with Berninger not even singing, allowing everyone else to build the song as he paces the front of the stage while the song gets faster and louder behind him. The massive group vocals and three drummers recall Arcade Fire more than The National, until Berninger returns to the microphone to sing the final refrain of “I think I’m hittin’ a wall,” as he leans out into the crowd.
Berninger’s relationship to the audience has always been the anchor of The National’s live shows, and Agganis was no different, stage techs holding up a trail of cable as he disappeared into the crowd early and often. He emerged during ‘Quiet Light’, only the second song of the night, and throughout the evening got lost among the people multiple times, ditching his mic to circumnavigate the arena and at one point climbing up into the loge seating, greeted by eager onlookers and surprising those returning from the concourse with drinks – all without missing a note.
The band collectively calls Cincinnati its home, but their trip to Boston found Berninger recalling fondly his youthful days of living in nearby Somerville with bassist Scott Devendorf, brother to drummer Bryan. Berninger spoke fondly of that time, and recounted seeing local act Flying Nuns at a Cambridge club the night that band got signed to Matador Records. “Scott had many lovers here,” Berninger mused with a wry smile, before launching into ‘Day I Die’, a rocking standout from their often-subtle 2017 record Sleep Well Beast. “The day I die, day I die, where will we be?” he asks everyone in the audience as he moves past them, jumping the stage barrier, wading through the front area of the arena floor, and climbing the fence that bisects the place to be carried aloft by the hands of all the people in the second section of the room. He’s gone so long the band has to improvise an extended instrumental intro for the next track, ‘The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness’, though after twenty years of cohesive songwriting, such a task is as effortless as breathing to that hive mind.
As one may expect from the band by now, the evening was full of songs that cut straight to the listener’s heart, little guided razors that sneak in through the ears and weave their way through vein and artery to one’s very core. Berninger and wife Carin Besser have shared writing duty for the past few albums, and at the midpoint of the night the band plays ‘Carin at the Liquor Store’, seemingly a tale from their youth when Berninger first knew he was falling in love. It’s ambiguous enough lyrically to cause pangs of both sweetness and sadness in the heart, walking the fine line The National and Berninger have tread so expertly since their very first album at the turn of the millennium. Equally emotive are ‘Rylan’, a paean to a depressed friend that took the band more than seven years to perfect and release; and ‘Graceless’, a Trouble Will Find Me crowd-pleaser that casts Berninger’s brain as a rotten apple being torn through by the “bullets” of his longing – utterly obliterated.
While it’s not the main subject of their music, The National have always been a politically aware and active band in addition to their more personal concerns. Having just returned from a handful of shows in Mexico, Berninger reflects upon its similarities to the USA: “Both of our countries are kind of run by criminals, in different ways,” he says. Having dedicated ‘I Need My Girl’ earlier in the evening to Roe v. Wade, the landmark reproductive rights case under assault by the current administration, Berninger uses the introduction of their most over political song, ‘Fake Empire’, to comment that the state of our nation as a grifter’s paradise is “fucking disgusting.” One can hear the frustration and vitriol in his voice, but love and concern to match. Berninger is a talented lyricist to be sure, songs like ‘Not in Kansas’ finding the words spilling from his lips like Skeleton Tree-era Nick Cave, but there are some times, in this climate in particular, where nothing but an unambiguous, explicit denouncement will suffice.
As the night draws to a close, the penultimate song is revealed to be ‘About Today’, which prompts gasps and a few elated screams from longtime fans in the audience. Hailing from the Cherry Tree EP, the song is a truly soul-rending portrait of a relationship on the brink, Berninger’s voice nearly cracking as he delivers the final line of each verse: “How close am I… to losing you?” Even in a discography so profoundly full of sad songs, this one goes for the jugular in a way that few others can match. It’s not particularly poetic or high-minded, it is simply plain, naked, and human – and it’s one of their finest. The final act of the night is the ritual crowd sing-along to ‘Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks’. In tune or not, it doesn’t matter. Matt and the band are as bare and unamplified as anyone else. Everybody knows the truth of the song.
All the very best of us string ourselves up for love.
Review and Photos by Collin Heroux
