Matt Berninger, lead singer for The National, is undoubtedly the classiest frontman in the indie music world. For the duration of the band’s impressive hour-and-45-minute set at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia on June 5, Berninger appeared to barely break a sweat in a fitted three-piece suit, with vest fully buttoned and skinny black tie pristinely tightened under collar. To secure his title though, the singer does his fellow frontmen one better by drinking not bottled water or beer on stage, but white wine, out of a wine glass, from a bottle resting in an ice bucket in front of the drum set.
The rest of the band more or less met the same standard of demure and professionalism, giving the show an air of seriousness to be expected from the quintet whose music can be described as having a grave urgency and usually macabre tone. This is especially true of its fifth album “High Violet” released this May, which the current tour is promoting.
For longtime fans of the group, though, the show was truly satisfying, as the set list was a great mix of the darker, more eerie cuts from “High Violet” and some of the more up-tempo favorites from the earlier “Boxer” and “Alligator.” It seemed as if the band responded to the audience’s enthusiasm for the older material by playing a total of seven songs from “Alligator.”
“This is just going to be an ‘Alligator’ festival,” guitarist Aaron Dessner joked, while Berninger shook his head disapprovingly before leading the band into heart-wrenching renditions of “Sorrow” and “England,” both from “High Violet.” Because a majority of its newer material features various brass instruments, the quintet included two additional musicians, making it possible to play songs like “Runaway” and “Conversation 16,” which feature subtle yet fervent trombone and French horn. Songs from the older albums, with a surprising inclusion of “Available” from the second album “Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers,” seemed to be the biggest crowd pleasers.
The highlight of the evening came when Berninger climbed off the stage and roamed through the entire crowd during “Abel,” all while screaming the song’s refrain “My mind’s not right,” providing a truly incredible catharsis, probably even for the singer himself. That crazed screaming is more characteristic of the band’s older material, like “Abel” and “Squalor Victoria.” The closest Berninger got to that fevered wail on a song off the new album was the refrain of “Conversation16,” in which he croons more intensely, “I was afraid I’d eat your brain/ ’Cause I’m evil.” The singer paid the balcony equal attention later by climbing from the stage into the upper level during an equally cathartic rendition of “Mr. November” during the band’s well-received four-song encore.
The show’s only opening act was rising indie trio The Antlers. After their 2009 release of “Hospice,” their first album since coming together as a full band, The Antlers toured the U.S. and Europe, and are now opening for The National as well as playing some stops on the major summer festival circuit. The Electric Factory seemed to be a good fit for the band’s ethereal and dreamlike sound, which makes use of a lot of synthesizers and feedback and can be hypnotizing in a bad way in a venue any more cavernous than that. Songs like “Sylvia,” which has the chorus “Get your head out of the oven,” and “Two” sounded particularly good as singer Peter Silberman howled over their crescendos.
With their growing fan base and popularity, The National are moving from smaller, more intimate venues to larger and more high-profile ones. On June 16, it will play Radio City Music Hall in New York City to an already sold-out house. But it seems that no matter how big the band gets, the performance quality will never lag so long as Berninger maintains the ability to utterly engross himself in the ethos and emotions of their material, and continues giving new life to older songs as the band’s sound and vision matures. It seems promising that the impressively classy quintet will be able to do just that. w
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