After success, The National explores new dark paths

8 September 2017: With an emotional intensity and musical perfectionism, The National had risen to become one of the top names in indie rock but also a bundle of frayed nerves.

For "Sleep Well Beast," the downcast rockers' seventh studio album which comes out on Friday, the Cincinnati-born band found that spending time apart helped to freshen the creative process.

"We wanted to destroy what we've created until now. We needed to explore new paths," said guitarist Bryce Dessner, who since helping form the band nearly two decades ago has pursued a successful side career as a modern composer.

"'Sleep Well Beast' is the group's most ambitious album. I think it shows our personality," he said.

"You can hear every instrument and we're no longer in that sonic maelstrom that long characterised us," Dessner, who is based in Paris, told AFP in flawless French.

The National, while enjoying critical acclaim early on, suddenly found itself moving from the underground to major stages at the world's leading festivals with the success of the 2010 album "High Violet" and then 2013's "Trouble Will Find Me."

"For this album, we weren't in any hurry to get back together," Dessner said.

And they would not necessarily run into one another after their marathon tours. Long based in Brooklyn, the band members have spread out widely.

Bryce Dessner's twin brother Aaron, who writes the melodies with him, has moved to Copenhagen. Singer and songwriter Matt Berninger lives in Los Angeles, bassist Scott Devendorf resides on Long Island and Devendorf's brother Bryan, the drummer, is back in Cincinnati.

- New freedom in studio -

They reunited at their newly built Long Pond studio in Hudson, the riverside artists' hub north of New York.

"It was the first time that we had so much space. We enjoyed working together, while in the past the sessions would be very difficult, full of anguish and extreme tensions," Bryce Dessner said.

"This was the first time when improvisation and experimentation didn't have dire consequences."

The National also recorded in Paris, Los Angeles and especially in Berlin, inside the storied Funkhaus studio used by East German radio.

"Sleep Well Beast" -- the title a partial reference to Aaron Dessner's sleeplessness as he cared for a newborn -- is no sharp departure for The National, with melancholy still clouding over the band.

But more subtly, the band found new influences, with song structures more in tune with classic pop.

"Musically we opened up to many things. We had fun with new machines. It was very enriching. We wanted to find a new energy," Dessner said.

- Sad music for dark times -

Berninger's dark baritone sets the tone on songs such as "Day I Die," the 46-year-old's grim look ahead in life, and "Guilty Party," a foretelling of a collapsing relationship.

Yet the album is also full of questions. "The System Only Dreams in Darkness" asks obliquely about the world's direction, while the title track of "Sleep Well Beast" wonders about the future awaiting children.

"What are we doing for young people in the United States? The song is about taking care of them by improving society and safeguarding the planet. But in reality, we're very far away from that," Dessner said.

The National's despair has grown since the shock election victory of President Donald Trump last November.

The National had played concerts to campaign for former president Barack Obama and his would-be successor Hillary Clinton back in Cincinnati, which is in the electorally crucial state of Ohio.

The National had finished "Sleep Well Beast" before Trump's victory -- which Dessner called a "catastrophe" -- but the election led to a new look.

"The world was turning upside down and that impacted us. A song like 'Turtleneck' didn't in itself talk about politics but had a lot of anger. We weren't thinking to put it on the album but it forced its way on," Dessner said.

The band has kept up its activism in different ways, with an October concert at New York's Forest Hills Stadium set in part to raise money for poverty alleviation in the city.

Dessner said the new album has "opened a window into the future."

"There are still new paths that we can explore, which is great after nearly 20 years of making music together."