According to Pitchfork, The National frontman Matt Berninger is developing a TV show about his life, and he says he’s “hoping it’s a comedy.” Berninger is working his writer Carin Besser (who is also his wife), his brother Tom, and Australian filmmaker Trent O’Donnell. Berninger dropped that reveal during an interview…
Unlike the Emmys or the Academy Awards, the Grammys actually give out a bunch of awards before anyone is even on the red carpet, getting things like Best Music Video and Best Spoken World Album out of the way—despite the fact that the latter category seemed to be setting up a thrilling feud this year—before the…
Back in February, Dirty Projectors’ David Longstreth took to his Instagram to pose an existential question: “Is it me or is the condition of indie rock in the 24½th century both bad and boujee?” “Bad,” he meant, in the sense that it was now largely a “musically underwhelming” Xerox of groups that came before. “Boujee”…
There was too much to listen to in 2017—not just albums, of which there were once again thousands, a barrage of releases from major-label veterans and SoundCloud up-and-comers alike, all vying for your attention. There was just too much of everything: a persistent, buzzing storm of push notifications and free-floating…
If there’s one thing capable of dragging us out of our food hangovers and back into the world of rapidly fading Thanksgiving nostalgia, it’s Bob’s Burgers’ consistently great holiday episodes. Not only does the Belcher clan offer up the perfect mix of comedy and heart, year-in and year-out, but we can usually count on…
This week a multitude of artists paid tribute to Tom Petty, who died of cardiac arrest on Monday at the age of 66. Such was the breadth of Petty’s long career influence and multitude of songs that you can already find a vast range of these live covers (on YouTube and elsewhere), from born-again country artist Miley…
“The fair-yet-wrong criticism leveled at The National over the years has been that all of the band’s records sound the same (or, worse and even more wrong, that they’re boring and they all sound the same). Sleep Well Beast probably won’t change the minds of naysayers, though it may earn the asterisk of being ‘the one…
Sleep Well Beast, the new album from stately indie rock veterans The National, is out today, and the group stopped by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last night to deliver a performance of one of the record’s most emotional tracks, “Day I Die.”In his glowing review of the album, the band’s seventh in 18 years, our…
In Lizzy Goodman’s recent oral history Meet Me In The Bathroom: Rebirth And Rock And Roll In New York City 2001-2011, The National’s Aaron Dessner reminisces about the band’s first practice space being right next door to Interpol’s, where they would overhear them rehearsing songs that would eventually land on Turn On…
Albums by The National are like your friendly neighborhood lush: In just an hour or so, they’re able to drink you under the table, say something profound enough to make the whole bar weep, then stumble out into the pre-dawn, proud and ashamed in equal measure. They also tend to be sneaky, both lyrically and…
Every Friday, dozens of new records are released into the wild. Some make big splashes, and others sink almost immediately. For most music consumers, it’s almost too much information, and save for those precious few who spend their hours glued to review sites and release calendars, it’s hard to know what’s coming out…
The National continued its low-key, sadly beautiful promotional push for its new album, Sleep Well Beast, today, releasing its latest single, “Carin At The Liquor Store.” Piano-driven and wistful, the track features Matt Berninger gently crooning about love, disappointment, and John Cheever’s corpse. It’s the third…
Somber alt-rock outfit The National announced its next new album, Sleep Well Beast, last month, complete with a new tour schedule and a single, “The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness.” Now, the band has released the second track from the upcoming album—out September 8—treating fans to the dreamy accusations of…
The National will release its seventh album—and fourth since achieving suave-n-gloomy perfection with 2005’s Alligator—on September 8, and will commence a world tour shortly thereafter. Sleep Well Beast was produced by the band’s own Aaron Dessner, whose production credits include the likes of Sharon Van Etten and…
In the long wait for the next season of Game Of Thrones, some fans have been getting their fix by attending the ongoing Game Of Thrones Live Concert Experience, an arena tour in which the music of the series is played live. And apparently, along the way growling rock men have been showing up to perform their…
We now know where all the artists and actors who are avoiding Donald Trump’s inauguration will be this weekend: at the Women’s March after-party. Pitchfork reports that The National, Sleater-Kinney, Ted Leo, Samantha Ronson, Tig Notaro, and Janeane Garofalo are among the musicians and comedians who will play the D.C.…
Donald Trump is a man of the people who just happens to live in a golden tower in Manhattan, and as a man of the people, he has an innate distrust for all celebrities. That’s why he probably only cried a little bit when virtually every famous person turned down an offer to attend or perform at his inauguration,…
While it’d be nice if music releases fit nicely into a year-by-year narrative, the end of 2016 proved that wasn’t the case. Even after we published our feature highlighting some of the best music of 2016, there was still more to be released for the year. In those last couple weeks before 2017 was rung in, we saw new…
Pitchfork reports that the indie rockers of The National are putting their money where their mouths are, with the band announcing that it’ll be donating all of the profits from its online store—dating back to Black Friday—to a number of liberal causes, including Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, Democracy Now!, and the…
In Binge And Purge, The A.V. Club’s Josh Modell is going through his collection of 2,000 CDs, writing a bit about each artist, and then purging the unnecessary in the hopes of cutting that number in half by the end of 2016. Read the intro here.