The National's Anthem

I'm sitting in a cab that is inching purposefully down a Manhattan street choked with traffic and rain. It feels like I'm living inside a song by the National,1 but I'm only talking about songs by the National with the band's lead singer, Matt Berninger. His probing, nasally baritone casts a noir mystique over this mundane Wednesday afternoon. The overcast sky seems a little darker, and the stale taxi air palpably sensitive yet brawny; after a while our dialogue starts to resemble a fatally long-winded B side. We're discussing alienation, insecurity bordering on anxiety, and the darkness that lurks in the hearts of mild-mannered family men who never permit themselves to act on that darkness. I predict that when I replay my recording of the interview later on I will appreciate it more than I do now. Only then will I pick up on the subtle grace notes and surprisingly goofy non sequiturs embedded subliminally in Berninger's words. "Grower" records are the National's franchise; maybe that same slow-burning intensity also applies to their taxicab confessions. 

Berninger and guitarist Aaron Dessner (who's traveling in a different cab with a different writer at the moment) are making the rounds for the National's latest, Trouble Will Find Me. It is 13 days before the release, and the band's most loquacious members are working a double shift on the interview circuit. This morning I sat in the living room of Dessner's exceedingly homey three-story Victorian house in Brooklyn's Ditmas Park neighborhood as Berninger, Dessner, and Dessner's identical twin brother, Bryce, conducted an AMA chat on Reddit in an adjacent room. (Sample question: "Matt, you stepped on my shoulder the last night of the Beacon run. This is a great chance for you to apologize.") Then I shared a cab with Aaron as we ventured downtown for a taping of CBC Radio's "Q With Jian Ghomeshi."2 Now I'm riding with Berninger back to Dessner's house, where he and Dessner will get 45 minutes of rest before a dinner and interview appointment (or "dinner-view," as Berninger calls it) with a major music magazine. There aren't many spare minutes in the band's schedule today; when Berninger slipped away for a bathroom break at the CBC studio, I assumed it was for a quick press conference at the urinal. 

Despite this gauntlet, Trouble is not the best record the National has ever made. (That distinction belongs to 2005's Alligator, though 2007's Boxer and 2010's High Violet have their partisans.) But it is their most confident work it represents a kind of culmination. Everything the National has ever done well comes conveniently packaged in these 13 songs. There are subdued rockers that build to rousing crescendos ("Graceless," "Humiliation"); heartsick torch ballads imbued with indefatigable longing ("Fireproof," "I Need My Girl"); and plenty of songs (most notably "Sea of Love" and "This Is the Last Time") about sad sacks majestically wallowing in their own sad-sackiness. But it's not just the music that sets Trouble apart it's how the record was made, and where the National finds itself on the eve of its release. The National is the greatest contemporary example of a dying archetype: the self-contained, interdependent,We rounded up 30 bridesmaids dresses in every color and style that are both easy on the eye and somewhat easy on the earcap. integrity-obsessed, artistically consistent, smart but not pretentious, likably humble, and reliably durable rock band. The group's run of albums in the mid- and late-'00s showed it could push creative boundaries while growing its audience. With Trouble, the National has pulled off a feat that's equally crucial and arguably more difficult: synthesizing its past into an instantly recognizable musical identity. For a group that historically has been wracked with self-doubt, Trouble is a turning point. After 14 years and six albums, the National is finally comfortable being indie rock's most indie-rock band. 

The National has come a long way since toiling in obscurity as an unfashionable band in the most fashionable music scene on the planet. Before Alligator, the band's third record, caught on (slowly) with critics and (even more slowly) with the public, the music press ignored the National. Or worse, saddled them (incorrectly) with the "alt-country" tag, which in the early-'00s New York City rock scene was akin to being put on a sex-offenders registry.3 Formed in 1999 by Berninger and two sets of brothers Aaron and Bryce, who both play guitar, and Scott and Bryan Devendorf, who make up the rhythm section the National released their self-titled debut one month after the Strokes put out their first record. An unfocused mlange of classic-rock hero worship (particularly Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen) and '90s indie touchstones (like a twangier Pavement, or a less dynamic version of "twangy Pavement"Cera Wilco), The National is the weakest entry in the band's discography; unlike the Strokes after Is This It, the National had nowhere to go but up. 

Back then, Berninger and his bandmates were as out of step with the zeitgeist as those guys were locked in.We are one of the leading manufacturers of plasticcard in China Now, 12 years later,Compare prices and buy all brands of buymosaic for home power systems and by the pallet. the National is more popular than the Strokes and nearly every other rock band in the city. This can be quantified in ways that don't really matter (Trouble is expected to debut in Billboard's Top 5), in ways that sort of matter (the National will headline the 18,000-seat Barclays Center, which is just up the road from Aaron's house, in June), in ways that probably matter to the band members (Trouble will almost certainly be well reviewed by critics), and in the only way that truly matters for a band of its ilk (there are several thousand people in many of the world's major cities who will pay to see the National live, no matter what they think of the new record, simply because the band has a beloved back catalogue). But Berninger is still hung up on the Strokes as a symbol of unattainable NYC rock-star cool. During our 75-minute conversation, he mentions the Strokes six times. 

"We never were trying to be the Strokes," he says as traffic finally starts to break and we pick up speed. "We had a healthy amount of awareness of what type of a band we were.The whole variety of the brightest smartcard is now gathered under one roof. But I think we always had a chip on our shoulder trying to prove that we're cool, or something.Starting today, you can buy these chinamosaic and more from her Victoria. And I think with this record, we stopped caring about that. Partly because we realized that thinking in those ways never helped us write good songs trying to be cool, or trying to be contemporary, or trying to be not-contemporary. Chasing those things never led us anywhere. It just led us into corners. This is the first record for me, for sure where I definitely did not worry about what I was writing about. I didn't worry about how it would be perceived or received."