The National

(The National at The Twilight Series)

When I was trippin', my face hung to the floor.  And I saw demon women.  -The eighteen-year old chatting and smoking weed next to me.

The National are not a marijuana band.  Drowning your sorrows in pink rabbits, sure.  But the clutch of teenagers hemmed in with us by the stage would not understand such a distinction.  They have never listened to Alligator or held down a real paying job.  So when my new friend offered me a joint and described his first experience with acid, he surprisingly touched on two things the band's songs do relate to: demons and women.

The D Man, Rip, Rizzo, and Stark the Vinyl Shark were tangled with the kids throughout The National's near transcendent set at Pioneer Park.  With the aid of the band's expert playing, Matt Berninger's dark-hued inner monologues hit the head and the heart.  When the kids--some half our age--started moshing during the climax of "Abel," Rizzo strategically positioned himself in the fray.  Every experienced concert-goer knows a moshpit is just a fight in embryo; Rizzo was ready to thrown down in the event one of his forearm shivers was met with foolish resistance.  (Hopefully the assailed would at least be in his twenties).  Stark laid some wood, too, and for the better part of the night we were able to ward off the wannabes and keep Rip and his closed-eyed reveries out of harm's way.

Berninger fed off the crowd's overzealous response and seemed to recognize the undisputed urgency of a perfect summer night.  Deep into the set-list, the frontman's microphone brooding lorded over into maniacal yelps.  He even jumped into the crowd on two occasions, supported by several blistering guitar moments that punctuated the band's refined post-punk.  The Dessner brothers have obviously learned the art of turning their stately accents into all-out assaults.

In a span of just seven years, The National have gone from Kilby Court to the Barclays Center, a heady ascent that has expanded their melancholy into mass rock-n-roll uplift.  The set-list was sublime.  Impeccably sequenced to rise and fall, the band careened into something profound when they closed with the best version of "Terrible Love" they have ever played.

A longtime fan could not complain with the career-arcing curation.  Opening with "Fake Empire." Playing back-to-back Alligator tracks "All the Wine" and "Abel."  Closing with "About Today" before the encore.  Hitting Boxer standouts "Mistaken For Strangers," "Apartment Story," and "Slow Show."  Sharing fine new tracks from Trouble Will Find Me.  Bloodbuzz.  It was all as it should be.

• Fake Empire.  Those opening piano lines!  That horn-inspired fanfare!  We're half awake in a fake empire.  Indeed!
• I Should Live in Salt.  Like many of The National's tracks--and entire albums for that matter--this song is a grower.  It gets more poignant every time I hear it.
• Don't Swallow the Cap.
• Bloodbuzz Ohio.  I happened to have my Buckeyes cap on from playing golf earlier in the day.  (If ever a band hit the links, The National would be a top five bet).  I could tell that Berninger, a Cincinnati native, noticed me even as he was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees.
• Mistaken For Strangers.  Is this the best white-collar song ever written?  The supremely-detailed opposite of a Springsteen song?  Showered and blue-blazered.  Fill yourself with quarters.
• Sea of Love.
• Demons.
• Afraid of Everyone.  Berninger said this was the only political song they have ever written.  Like the best ones (see here, here, or here), its specific references are tied to universal themes, allowing almost every listener to get behind the message.  The band slayed the singular thrust of the song's pathos--one of the best moments of the night.
• Conversation 16.
• Squalor Victoria.  Exhibit A for The National's elegant rock-n-roll musicianship.  The string and piano flourishes, the post-rock guitars, and the elliptically-precise lyrics underpin Berninger's world-weary baritone.  But when he shredded his vocal cords near the end of the song, raising heavenly glasses was met with surprising fury.  Another unexpected highlight.
• I Need My Girl.
• This Is The Last Time.  On every song, drummer Bryan Devendorf could be praised for his understated yet song-carrying syncopation.  In the on-stage set-up, he easily recedes into the background.  But his sticks cannot be overlooked at any time during the show.
• All The Wine.  I'm a festival, I'm a parade!
• Abel.  My mind's not right!  My mind's not right!
• Slow Show.
• Apartment Story.  A few years ago, The D Man wrote that this was one of the Thirty Best Songs of the Decade.  Though the band has many other songs that could make a compelling case, there is little doubt that this is majestic pop storytelling.
• Sorrow.
• Pink Rabbits.
• Graceless.  A standout from Trouble Will Find Me, this song is another in a long line of glorious and intelligent crescendos.  Can any other band build to more magnificent climaxes?  Plateaus on plateaus, vistas on vistas.
• England.
• About Today.  A touching and exquisite track that was recently featured in the closing scenes of The Warrior.  From the Cherry Tree EP.  The band has found a way to make it more muscular and potent, the initial dirge toppling into a guitar-strewn apex.
• Humiliation.
• Mr. November.  
• Terrible Love.  It's a terrible love and I'm walking with spiders!  The three-song encore closed with an inspired performance of the opening track from High Violet.  Though the album version is slightly underwhelming for The D Man, "Terrible Love" proved to be an excellent closer.  Berninger was still wading through the crowd as the Dessners and Devendorfs exceeded maximum velocity that had been building throughout "Humiliation" and "Mr. November." Saving the very best for last? Well played, gentlemen.