Last Wednesday, I made my way from my apartment ten blocks southwest of the Marcy Projects, the houses Jay-Z immortalized, to the Barclays Center, the house Jay-Z built. I was out to reacquaint myself with The National, a band of Cincinnatians who moved to Brooklyn in the mid-1990s and steadily built themselves into darlings of the New York music scene, then of outlets like NPR and Pitchfork, and, for a few years, of me while I was living in a dank bedroom in Vancouver followed by a sweltering one in Toronto. Along with many other Brooklyn bands, they became part of a ceaseless flood of recommendations foisted on me by the web as it came to replace Edmonton’s 100.3 The Bear FM as the primary source of my largely unimaginative taste in music. The Barclays Center gig looked to be equal parts adopted-homecoming and victory lap for The National: a capacity show at the brand-new temple of new-establishment Brooklyn, within biking distance of lead singer Matt Berninger’s Ditmas Park home—his having presumably been priced out of Williamsburg.
The National have been celebrated (and reviled) for their stellar dank-bedroom rock almost since their first, self-titled LP appeared in 2001; with their sixth, Trouble Will Find Me, they’ve aged into makers of stellar sad-dad rock. Their pretty and apocalyptic melodies have become less strained, and lead singer Matt Berninger's concerns have matured—where his go-to tropes were once tortured love, disarrayed minds, and, for some reason, lemons, he now misses his wife and wants to repair his relationship with his brother. He’s been a gripping live presence throughout. I remember watching him climb over the floor seats at Massey Hall during “Mr. November,” seeing the crowd react, and thinking the band had that quality artists forsake the promise of comfortable midwestern lives to seek out in themselves—that indefinable it.
The National will play a free concert as part of Toronto’s NXNE festival Friday, June 14 at Yonge-Dundas Square.
