Mining The Depths

In advance of its release, Trouble Will Find Me, the sixth album for The National, is being roughly painted as a 'rocking' set. After the sombre, elegant Boxer (2007) and opaque, claustrophobic High Violet (2010), this time the Brooklyn-based quintet are tossing out terms like “immediate and visceral” and “free-wheeling” to talk of their latest LP; the PR text promising directness, coherency and approachability. It's, compared to a back catalogue filled with songs mournful, glowering and tortured in equal turns – they did, after all, release a record called Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers – The National at their most joyous.

But listening to Matt Berninger's baritone mumbles and moans, a different picture emerges. Beyond the classic-rock records playing on the lyrical stereo – Bona Drag, Let It Be, and Nevermind all get mentioned – there's constant images of the sea, of being underwater, drowning; Berninger singing things like “learn to appreciate the void” and “I wish I could rise above it, but I stay down with my demons” as he hands himself over to the swirling darkness. And, up above, there's always an inscrutable heaven looming, beckoning, even if he “can't face heaven all heaven-faced”. “I have faith but don't believe it,” Berninger admits; “if I die this instant,” he wonders; later, “now I know what dying means.”

“It's pretty strange, it's like we've made a fun record about dying,” laughs Aaron Dessner, The National's guitarist, who handles composition of the band's music with brother/co-guitarist, Bryce. “There is a lot of references to passing, to the afterlife, to heaven, whether [Berninger] believes in it or not. For me, he seems to be exploring this idea that as you get older, you get more responsibilities, you have children, you start to think more about how your time here is not just your own life. The impact you have is felt in other people. When he says 'we'll all arrive in heaven alive', I think what he means is that even when you pass, your children are still alive, your friends are still behind, the things that you've made are still there.

“It reappears throughout the record in different ways; like 'I'm secretly in love with everyone I grew up with'. This idea that you're connected to everyone you've ever known, that you leave a trace behind even after you've gone. I think all these thoughts emerged later, because at first we thought we were making this fun, bouncy record with lots of multi-layered drum-parts that give it this almost 'dancey' appeal. But, ultimately, when the lyrics start to emerge, you notice that there are all these references to death, even some seemingly suicidal references. As usual, Matt is blurring the lines between things with humour, you don't really know if he's really saying that or slightly sarcastically saying that.”

Throughout The National's ascendant rise of acclaimed records Berninger's poetic lyrics have touched upon a run of social anxieties; from the awkwardness of being out on tiles to the burdens of encroaching middle-age, to trying and failing to live up to the dreams you have for yourself, or that others have for you. They've been, for want of a better term; determinedly grown-up, something that's only increased since Berninger became a father to his four-year-old daughter, Isla. “He's often thinking about how he's responsible for his daughter,” says Dessner, “and how that's more important than his rock band, more important than himself, even. It's all coming through in the lyrics, this sense of the connection you have to others, with your connection to your child being the most intense.”

Working on Trouble Will Find Me, Berninger was “in a much more prolific state-of-mind”, the usual pulling-teeth quality of the creative process falling away. “He had tapped into this very creative vein, where it was just flowing,” says Dessner. “The album takes its cues from that, in some ways: it's an album that's just flowing, and loose, and natural, and confident.” This makes The National's sixth LP a huge contrast to the albums that preceded it. “Boxer and High Violet were both very difficult records to make,” Dessner freely admits. Freely, because it was hardly a secret; in fact, The National's famously-fraught recording process – and the natural conflicts that arise of being a band with two sets of brothers, Aaron and Bryce, plus the fraternal rhythm-section of Scott and Bryan Devendorf – essentially became their identity.

“There's the story, which is true, about how we literally made 100 different versions of [High Violet's] Lemonworld,” says Dessner. “It's such a simple song that anyone would rightly wonder why we needed to make 100 versions of it, but that was just us trying to deal with these differences of opinion…

“There were a lot of inter-personal tensions when we were making High Violet, and it feels like it's there on the record. But then the High Violet touring cycle turned out to be unexpectedly joyous, it was actually fun, and by the end we were enjoying being in the band, and felt very thankful for what we'd accomplished. There had been a lot of dark feelings brewing over the years, a lot of personal problems between us – nothing dramatic, but still very persistent – and, finally, it was like we all got over those things at the same time.”

Dessner attributes much of that to the success of High Violet, which debuted in the top five in the UK, US, Canada, New Zealand and a run of European countries. After years of submitting to the touring grind, and early years of well-documented disappointment, struggle and unpopularity, now The National could play more sparingly, in concert halls, spend more time at home with their budding families. And, after they'd all grown to resent the dynamic of their band – and in some ways, the band itself – playing their shows after High Violet reawakened that love for the band-as-unit.

“We embraced the chemistry of the band, rather than trying to fight it, and we just ran with it,” Dessner says; this leading all the way to Trouble Will Find Me. “It wasn't an album without its difficult moments – I nearly lost my mind towards the end, as usual – but they didn't define the recordings. Things just happened so spontaneously... We struck a nerve, and it was almost like the beginning of the band, when we used to just write songs. Like, I'd lay down a simple guitar part, a day later Matt would have some lyrics; we were much more laidback about the whole thing. Something did click with this record, like that chemistry came back, and it was happening that easily, and that gives it this feeling of coming full circle, back to where we began. Like, it's refreshing, but oddly nostalgic.”