Live Review: The National @ The Tabernacle, May 27

By Julia Reidy

It began with "Runaway." The nine-member incarnation of The National, complete with three horn players and a keyboardist, began the set with a new, mesmerizing, post-Boxer song. Poignant and compelling even on the first go-around, everyone listened with rapt attention. Then, like one communal exhale, guitarists Aaron and Bryce Dessner launched into the opening riffs of "Start A War" and the place erupted. It wasn't the during-intro cheers that marked the change, it was that the baritone notes that spilled out of Matt Berninger as he clutched his microphone like a lifeline were now veiled in a delicate tenor and soprano cloak as thousands sang along with him. Our song shimmered in the background like the tinsel curtain behind the band itself.

The set was as expansive as the room at the Tabernacle, all chandeliers and hand-painted walls. Between most of the songs from their most recent full-length, Boxer, The National interspersed numbers from Alligator and two or three yet-to-be-released tracks. They played "Green Gloves," "Squalor Victoria," "Fake Empire" and "Apartment Story" (which builds upon itself much differently live than on the record), but also "Mr. November" and "Secret Meeting." Berninger was in unusually high spirits, bantering with the audience, giving someone a cup of champagne because he'd called Berninger "beautiful" in a throw-away yell. "I don't get that much," he told the amazed crowd member.

There are several truly impressive things about watching The National play live: the Dessner brothers ping-ponging guitar parts off each other, Berninger's vocal charisma, the sheer intricacy of the arrangements and the way in which the members switch instruments so effectively, to name a few. But on my second experience with them, I was again most impressed with drummer Bryan Devendorf. At the risk of sounding trite, he's their very heartbeat, albeit riddled with arrhythmias and stutters, their driving force, their propellant. With his help, The National is consistently proving themselves among the very best bands currently performing; and they must be, to make music so somber and dark into an experience so transcendent.

Comments

[Doug Hastings]

Excellent review, Julia, except I think the show was actually May 27, not June 27, a day which has not yet occurred this year (unless, of course, you have some sort of crystal ball, in which case please let me know how the Meat Puppets are going to be at The EARL on June 16)