Despite the fact they all hail from Cincinnati, OH, during the past 15 years, The National have come to define Brooklyn indie-rock. In certain ways, that makes them quintessential New Yorkers: the five members of the stalwart indie-rock band met when they were teenagers, grew up listening to a very Midwestern mix of alternative rock and jambands, relocated to the big city in their 20s and, only after years of struggling through the club circuit on slow burn, achieved their musical dreams. The band’s often overlooked Ohio roots and trademark sibling dynamics play out during Mistaken for Strangers, a film directed by lead singer Matt Berninger’s brother Tom, which has finally achieved a wide release after a year on the festival circuit. Around the time of the film’s completion, Relix and Jambands.com spoke to Matt Berninger in his native Cincinnati about the band’s humble roots, Midwest upbringing and confident new album, Trouble Will Find Me.
We are in The National’s collective hometown of Cincinnati, OH. Although the entire band grew up around the city, you lived a little ways away. Can you describe your neighborhood versus the rest of the band’s?
I grew up on the West Side. I mean, I make more of it than they do, but the East Side was sort of like—the West Siders always thought the East Side was the snobby side and the West Side was sort of the wrong side of the tracks. It is not really like that—I grew up in an amazing, normal suburb, but I like to pretend I grew up in the gritty side of town [Laughter.]
What was the New Wave indie-scene like in Cincinnati when you were younger?
There wasn’t a big music scene. Shake wasn’t the record store I went to. When I was growing up on the West Side there was a little place called Circle CDs that—I don’t even know how many years it lasted, but it was in this little house. You wouldn’t even believe that there was a record store in there, but it was one of the only places. And because in ’97 and WOXY was a radio station out of Miami, there was a very small but crazy sort of alternative rock scene in Cincinnati. On the river right here, you would come down and there was a thing called Night Waves, where once a month on a Tuesday night there would be a river boat that would play nothing but New Order and The Smiths and The Cure. And also because they were out on the river, they were serving underage kids. And so I was 16, and I was going and getting drunk on a river boat, you know, drinking to The Cure with lots of cool, older goth girls and stuff. By far, the most significant part of my life as far as music was doing that thing.
So ’97 WOXY was sort of a lifeline for artsy, alternative kids in Cincinnati, but there was also a lot of really awesome bands like The Tiger Lillies. There was The Breeders, and those guys were just up the road sort of. But Afghan Whigs, and there were a couple of bars and stuff where you would go and see local bands that were badasses. And my favorite was The Tiger Lillies. I guess every city has its underground weird art/rock scene—I don’t know if by other city standards was it healthy, but I was just super into it, and it felt like the coolest place in the world, and it definitely was a formative thing. Also Braniac. They were also around, and one of the best bands internationally at that time.
The National have been described as the definitive Brooklyn indie-rock band but you are all from Ohio and now live throughout the country. In what ways would you say you are a New York band versus a Midwestern band?
Maybe personality-wise, or maybe a certain amount of my self deprecation comes from being a band that came from Cincinnati. And then we moved to New York for school and all that kind of stuff. Maybe that is the Ohio in the music I don’t know, it’s hard to say. I think all the Cincinnati bands, even Guided by Voices or Breeders or Afghan Whigs, there is something about the DNA of those bands that is about not being cool or something like that, but embracing and being spitefully un-cool in a weird way, which is even more cool. I don’t know, maybe there is some of that. I can’t tell. It’s really hard to say, but being in Brooklyn was a big motivating factor in our band. We formed in Brooklyn, and we practiced right next to Interpol, and they sounded amazing through the wall, and it made us try harder to be a good band, and it took us longer to be a good band, so I don’t know. It’s hard to say how much Ohio is in our musical DNA.
According to your bandmates, Trouble Will Find Me was recorded quicker than average The National album. Do you agree with that assesment?
It wasn’t quicker, it just happened with more ease—some sort of different vibe.
Aaron Dessner said he gave you these nuggets of music, and you jumped right into the lyrical process a little bit quicker than normal. Was it something about those songs that hit you more immediately or was it you have gotten more used to the recording process?
I think it could have been the music and, in some cases, it definitely was—like “I Should Live in Salt” and “Pink Rabbits.” And some of the music he was sending me wasn’t overthought too much. In the past records, they wouldn’t send me something unless they thought it was, from an academic perspective, really, really, really interesting or good, and none of that ever mattered to me. I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. I mean, I could tell, “Oh that’s maybe weirder,” but it didn’t ever make it any better to me. The simplest thing is sometimes if it was the right sequence of chords. It didn’t matter if it was breaking any new ground.
But I think this time Aaron was sending me stuff that might have been a little less over thought because he had a baby at the time, and he was stealing hours away just to go back in the studio and do little things, and I think he wasn’t over thinking it. Well, that’s the way I like to think of it, and it might have had something to do with the fact that I was connecting to it in some sort of immediate visceral level. But then again, it might have just been because we were just relaxing a little bit about what kind of band we were, what kind of image there was about the band. We didn’t really care as much about being cool or weird or anything. Not that we ever did, but this time we were just writing songs and chasing the songs, and we weren’t overthinking it too much.
And do you think that is because High Violet was so successful? In that sense you have already proved yourself?
It might have had something to do with it. But I think it was a combination of having three records that were sort of on all smaller levels but sequentially sort of on a—critically embraced, but also people just seemed to find us because of all three of those records. It wasn’t like after High Violet all of a sudden people knew who we were—it was a very gradual thing. So I think we kind of felt like we finally had the confidence, like, “We finally know what we’re doing. Let’s not worry so much about whatever the image of The National is or whatever the next National record should be.” Are we supposed to reinvent the wheel?
So I just think we were just listening to the music, and I wasn’t worried about the lyrics being overly sentimental—I should avoid writing too many sad songs or too many sentimental songs because that’s been our label for so long: a sad, miserable, depressing guy. I never thought of it that way, even though I understand why a lot of our music gets that label and it makes sense. But this time I stopped worrying about that. I stopped caring, and songs like “I Need My Girl,” the stuff that is very sentimental, and songs like “Pink Rabbits”—there are these kind of meandering piano ballads. I think all of us were just thinking if the song sounded good, that’s all that mattered. It didn’t matter if it was like, “Oh, what would The Dirty Projectors think of this?” Like The Dirty Projectors love our band and vice versa, but they are very academic, and so I think there was a time for Aaron or Bryce, they wanted to—and Bryce especially—cared about that. This time, I think even he was like, “Well, let’s not worry about all those sort of abstract issues.”
It’s funny when you mention the word sad because I always felt that while your music has always been very introspective and dark it is not as overtly sad and gloomy as a band like Radiohead. Your songs are almost uplifting in a subtle way.
Yeah, I understand why we get the dark, mopey, depressing sort of thing because we are probably more that way than most bands. But I just think that our songs are really funny a lot of times, and so there is a catharsis in sort of digging into that dark stuff.
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.
