The National doesn’t rest on the excellent Sleep Well Beast
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 musically—it’s kind of their trick, to insinuate themselves slowly over time, appearing at first to be more meditative and less hooky than they actually are. The band’s seventh album in just shy of 20 years as a band is more direct with both its words and sounds. That makes sense, given these angry, depressing times: There’s not a lot of room for resignation or even patience when it feels like the world—political for sure, and in the case of this album, personal—is falling apart. Can those things be spun into relevant, redemptive music? That’s tricky business, but in the case of The National, turmoil has always been potent fuel, and Sleep Well Beast is the band’s fifth album in a row that feels essential, connected, and unflinching.
It begins, though, almost imperceptibly, with a slowly rising, vaguely electronic beat, as if it’s creeping into the room. That’s the even-more-Leonard Cohen-esque-than-usual “Nobody Else Will Be There,” driven by a simple beat—a motif here—and bare-bones piano line. It’s Sleep Well Beast’s first examination of a relationship on the rocks, fueled by familiar contempt, and a gorgeous example of singer Matt Berninger’s specialty: the one-sided conversation. “Can’t we just go home?” he quietly pleads. That song packs a brutal one-two punch with the much more immediate, harrowing, spectacularly catchy “Day I Die,” which begins, “I don’t need you / I don’t need you / Besides I barely even see you anymore.” The equally haunting slow burner “Guilty Party” also goes down that road, echoing Dave Mason’s 1977 breakup hit “We Just Disagree” (only, y’know, good). Berninger recently told a worried NPR interviewer that, while Sleep Well Beast has threads of divorce running through it, his relationship with his wife/frequent lyrical collaborator Carin Besser is solid. Phew.