You mentioned that lyrically you were trying to push from a different perspective this time. And I know from when I talked to you in the past, you have notebooks where you write down ideas all the time and draw upon that. When you got these sketches from Aaron, did you start writing toward those bits, or did you have those ideas already, and did you try to place them in the right spot?

I actually stopped writing lyrics without listening to music. It was probably Boxer where I took—all that mattered was I was just listening and I put my headphones on and would start to sing along and start to mumble along nonsense and write while I was listening to the music. I mean, occasionally I will have an, “Oh, that’s something kind of funny,” like a little fragment or a title of a song I will put into my iPhone. But I never sit there with a notepad writing lyrics without listening to the music. So it’s always done to the music.

I changed the approach mostly because I started having more fun just looking for melody, and that became an easier way to kind of back into lyrics. Because once you start mumbling melodies, and mumbling things to melodies, if it’s a good melody words start to just cling to it like flypaper. And so I would find a good melody and I would just mumble that melody over and over again until words just started to stick to it. And that became for me a much more enjoyable and I think better way of writing words instead of writing words and trying to squeeze them into something and being precious in the phrasing or being precious about the lyrics. Not that I don’t work on the lyrics, but once I waited until much later in the process to start crafting the lyrics, I started having a lot more fun.

Around the release of Trouble Will Find Me, The National performed your song “Sorrow” for eight hours straight at MoMA’s PS1 as part of an art installation. What was that experience like from your perspective?

The artist Ragnar Kjartansson is an Icelandic guy. I didn’t know much about him because I don’t follow that thing too much, but he pitched the idea to MoMA, and MoMA approached us about it, and then I went and did some research on him, and it didn’t take much research to realize that what he does isn’t about endurance and the pain. He’s not like a Abramović. He’s not unlike her, but he’s different. There’s something about the joy of repetition of something and the humor of doing something over and over again. Especially the humor of doing something that is very sad over and over again. And I think he did a Mozart aria for 12 hours straight, which is a very sad thing, and he also had his mother spit in his face for like six hours in a row. But there is a humor in it after a while.

He became obsessed with the song “Sorrow,” and so he pitched that to MoMA. And then we met him, and he’s really sweet and really funny and not unlike my brother. He’s kind of like a rolly-polly, super funny, sweet guy. It’s very much about the euphoria and the humor of repeating something dark and sad. So we agreed to do it, and it was actually a really positive experience for everyone in the band. There were about 80 people that just came in and rushed to the stage and didn’t leave the whole time, and so it was a bonding thing for the band. And there were also some superfans that we have seen in the crowds at a lot of shows, and there they were at the MoMA thing for six hours, not moving.

Were you really tired?

Yeah, it was exhausting, but more mentally exhausting than physically exhausting. I think the guys that were playing—I mean, Bryan played 16 notes, and it was harder on him. He had to take a couple of breaks. We learned to even respect the song a little more after doing it 108 times. And I can’t tell exactly what happened, but it became a very emotional thing in a very good way. It’s not something we will ever do again, but the whole band has talked about it being one of the most significant, cool things we have ever done as a band.

I was pleasantly surprised that at your next show, you played “Sorrow” again.

Honestly it made us actually like that song even more. After 50 times, we were like, “Yeah, it’s still pretty fun to play,” and after 80 times it started taking on a different meaning. It was strange. By doing it so many times in a row it made us even understand our own music, in a way, and how it can grow on you and how a good song can last after years and years and years. In a weird way we kind of went, “This is a fucking good song,” even after 108 times of it. And then Jay-Z took it, and you know… [Laughter.]

Another surprising side project you were involved with in between the album was you were singing on Trey Anastasio’s new album.

I’m pretty buried in the mix.

Right, well you could hear your baritone mellow there. How did you get involved in that project? I know some of the other guys in the band have some deeper roots in that world than you.

Well, Bryan and Scott have deeper roots in Phish and Grateful Dead than I do. But Trey came and joined us on the stage when we did our run of Beacon shows in New York City. And one of the nights he came and played with us just for fun because Peter Katis, who had produced three of our records, was producing his record. We sort of met him through that. And he is the nicest guy in the world, and so we invited him to come, and he sort of just jammed with us. We just met, and he was a really nice guy, and he’s a big fan, and so he invited me to come up and sing on the record and stuff. And I had a more prominent part, but then in the mixing process I think they it buried it. [Laughter.] I was so good on it. [Laughter.] Of all the people we have met, he is definitely in the top tier of the sweetest, nicest guys.

There is a famous story where Scott dragged you to see Phish at Deer Creek in the mid-90s. Apparently, you hid the car for most of the weekend.

I went to a Phish show like way back, and it wasn’t Phish I hated, it was, the whole, whatever, young, rich people pretending they were poor and smelly. I hated the culture of that dance, so that’s what bothered me. I was a bitter Smiths fan, and I was at this thing with people I knew from Cincinnati who were assholes, and they would purposely make themselves stinkier just to be covered in dirt, and everybody romanticized Woodstock so much, and so many people were posing. I remember that is what I hated seeing so much—the crowd, the posing, and the weird adopting of this personality that everybody just jumped into. So that is why I went and hid in the parking lot. But don’t tell Trey.

Pages:« Previous Page