Gig Review: The National @ TSB Arena, Wellington, 25 February 2024

I’m a longtime fan of The National, collecting virtually everything the band has released over the past couple of decades. More or less, give or take. So naturally, having missed all of the band’s previous outings in Aotearoa, I picked up tickets for their first ever Wellington show as early as last September. It felt like a long wait.

When The Beths were later added to the bill as the Wellington support - Fazerdaze getting the prior night’s Auckland slot - it was merely a bonus. But it also ensured I was at the venue suitably early to catch the much-loved local power-poppers’ set. By my own unscientific estimation, in terms of gigs, I’ve probably seen more of The Beths than I have of any other live act across the past decade or so.

Once again they didn’t disappoint, pumping out as polished a half hour set - around ten songs - as I can recall from them, with a mix of old and newer tracks offering the perfect taster for any Beths-newbies. My own pick of the bunch being ‘Whatever’, the oldest track of all, an ageless banger that seems to sound better each time I hear it. Perfect pop from a band continually striving to achieve exactly that.

 I’d heard really great things about The National’s live shows. Some reports even suggesting that the band’s compelling live performances far and away exceed any notional high bar created by its recorded output. That’s a fairly big call, and it’s one that was perhaps the main catalyst for my own *relative* level of disappointment upon exiting the near full venue late on Sunday night.

It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what disappointed me. And I’m not even sure disappointment is the right word. More nonchalance, or indifference on my part.

It wasn’t as though the band was lacking any professionalism or inspiration. It wasn’t a lack of effort on their part. The set-list was decent - stacked with older classics blended with more recent stuff. They played for more than two hours, and with frontman Matt Berninger to the fore as the focal point, The National has an energetic and beguiling stage presence rivalled by very few bands on the stadium circuit.

Indeed, there’s been worse concerts at that venue that I’ve enjoyed far more, for whatever reason that was. The one I can’t put my finger on.

Those “older classics” included the likes of ‘Squalor Victoria’, ‘Bloodbuzz Ohio’, ‘Conversation 16’, and the slow burning, now 20-year-old, ‘Cherry Tree’. All of them immaculately presented with enough live grit in there to make each one a captivating enough experience. But there was also a little splash of mud in the vocal mix, a lack of clarity even, and while Berninger’s baritone croon works brilliantly on record, I felt his live, clipped, almost shouty/spoken vocal delivery, was found a little wanting at times.

That angsty line in ‘Conversation 16’ where he sings “I was afraid, I’d eat your brains … cos I’m evil” loses some of its horror impact when you remove a more ambiguous croon from its wider punch, and replace it with a short sharp shouty jab.

The “newer stuff” included the recent break-up anthem ‘Eucalyptus’, which went down well as an early treat, ‘Tropic Morning News’, and much later, ‘Alien’. Again, all great, but the band’s focus seemed to be more around its 2010 to 2020 work, with obligatory lip service paid to the two most recent 2023 album releases.

That meant ‘Demons’, ‘Don’t Swallow The Cap’, a superb ‘I Need My Girl’, ‘Day I Die’, ‘Rylan’, ‘Graceless’ et al. Plus others.

At one point, mid-song, Berninger left the stage and made his way to near the bar at the back of the venue - without buying a round! - continuing to “sing”, his stage tech forced to work a minor miracle to keep man and microphone connected. All it would take is some clown in the crowd to do his absolute worst … a thought I quickly and admirably managed to suppress as Berninger passed within an arm’s reach of me.

A five-song encore meant Wellington was treated to a set-list of more than a couple of dozen carefully selected tracks, the band doing more than enough to make up for lost time in the capital, and there’s no doubt they offered good value for money.

The crowd itself was an interesting mix. From the young and the single, to middle-aged couples and everything in-between. An outing for those of a mainstream persuasion perhaps, while it also remains clear - on account of thoughtful clever lyricism mostly - that The National can still court fringes of the indie scene its music has always remained on the very periphery of.

It’s a fine line. Nobody wants to be thought of as an American version of Coldplay, do they?

I’m pleased I went along. Sunday night and all. To scratch that itch.

Are The National a better live proposition than they are as a studio outfit?

That’s a hard “no” from me. Not from this experience anyway. They’re good, possibly great, but that discography is a little bit special.

They’re certainly much more energetic on stage, no question, but for clarity of sound, for sense of purpose and direction in the production, for Berninger’s lush vocal delivery, I’m more than happy to content myself with the band’s studio work. And just quietly, I probably won’t rush out to buy tickets if they visit here again. 

No pics with this one. I took some, but none of them were particularly great when viewed in the cold light of the following day, so I’ll spare you that.  

Albums of 2020

It’s time for the annual wrap of the best new albums added to your blogger’s collection this year. There’s been a few, but I’ll choose ten for this post, and then take a look at the best of the rest, compilations/reissues, and EPs in a series of separate posts as we enter the new year. This is not so much a “best of” 2020, because I’ve no doubt I’ve missed many of the actual best albums, but more of a personal “most-listened-to” list. As ever, the only prerequisite for inclusion is that I picked up a copy of the album during the year (in any format), which does, admittedly, rule out a good number of decent albums I merely preview-streamed via Spotify and failed to follow through with.

10. The Beths - Jump Rope Gazers

2020 saw Auckland indie-pop nerds The Beths consolidate their reputation as one of the best young bands in the country. A fact confirmed when they picked up three gongs at the annual Aotearoa Music Awards. Sophomore album Jump Rope Gazers wasn’t dramatically different from the band’s debut, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. My full review is here.

9. The Phoenix Foundation - Friend Ship

Five years on from the release of Give Up Your Dreams, which for me was something close to a career high watermark for The Phoenix Foundation (and an album rated number two on this blog’s year-end list for 2015), Wellington’s most eclectic pop collective returned with Friend Ship. And while it didn’t quite scale the lofty heights of GUYD, or earlier work like Horsepower, Pegasus, or Buffalo, it was another great set from a bunch of guys who continue to poke away at boundaries without compromising their core sound. On Friend Ship we got everything from elaborate orchestral stuff - see collaborations with the NZSO - to odd psychedelic moments, proggy flavours, and more snippets of humour than you can shake a funny cigarette at. But mostly we got crafty intelligent pop music dressed in a variety of threads, and the collaborations with Hollie Fullbrook (‘Decision Dollars’, ‘Tranquility’) and Nadia Reid (‘Hounds of Hell’) were outstanding. I also really loved the pomp and swagger of ‘Guru’, the scene-setting album opener. Oddly though, given that it was one of the more high profile album takeaways, and clearly loved elsewhere, I was less taken by the faux-disco of ‘Landline’, which for me veered beyond pastiche and into the realm of just plain cheesy. But then, I’ve always struggled with irony, and it wouldn’t be a proper Phoenix Foundation album if there wasn’t at least one track that left me scratching my head. Not reviewed on the blog.

8. Murmur Tooth - A Fault in This Machine

I was heavily invested in this one during our autumn lockdown period. In my original review (here), I called it the most uneasy listening “easy listening” album you’re likely to hear all year, and nothing happened to change that view. I loved it.

7. Alicia Keys - Alicia

I’m a fan of pure unadulterated pop music, and although Alicia Keys is not usually an artist I’d necessarily gravitate towards, Alicia was an album for the ages. Socially conscious, empowering, and life affirming. My review is here.

6. Nadia Reid - Out of My Province

How could any local not love an album that opens with the line “you took me to Levin”? ... for the uninitiated, Levin is a small soulless market town, about an hour’s drive north of Wellington in New Zealand’s lower North Island, and a million miles removed from any of the romance implied on Nadia Reid’s album opener ‘All of my Love’. And coincidently, a town not a million miles away from where your blogger resides. Anyway, it’s that sense of “us” that first attracted me to Reid’s work as long ago as her Preservation album (of 2017) after overlooking far too much of her early stuff. Out of my Province was probably the biggest “grower” of this year’s bunch. After the first couple of listens I concluded it was all a bit too beige and “generic folky”, but I stuck with it, and as time passed I became far better acquainted with all of its many hidden charms. In fact, although it is only number six on this list, Out of My Province was probably the album I listened to more than any other across the full year. It just wasn’t my ultimate favourite. It helped that it was so workplace (office) compliant and I was able to spend a lot of time with it. Best cuts: ‘Best Thing’, and the silver scroll-nominated ‘Get the Devil Out of Me’. Not reviewed on the blog, which is perhaps just as well, because I feel very differently about it today than I did when I first picked it up.

5. Matt Berninger - Serpentine Prison

Another genuine grower, after curiosity got the better of me. I mean, a Matt Berninger (The National) solo work in collaboration with the great Booker T. Jones, what could possibly go wrong? Not much, evidently. My review is here.

4. The Orb - Abolition of the Royal Familia

An all new intoxicating blend of disco, deep house, ambient electronica, and skanky dub. New Orb, just like old Orb, and if there was a track that summed up the post-apocalyptic nature of 2020 better than album closer ‘Slave Till U Die No Matter What U Buy’, which appropriates Jello Biafra’s ‘Message From Our Sponsor’ spoken-word narrative, then I didn’t hear it. My review is here.

3. The War on Drugs - Live Drugs

Given that I’m going to do a blog year-in-review write-up specifically on compilations and reissues, I was tempted to save this one for that piece. A live album is a compilation by default, right? Um, I guess, but Live Drugs was just too good to ignore and there were a few occasions late in the year when I had this on repeat, so it has to qualify on my most-listened-to list instead. Way more than the sum of its parts, the album is essentially a collection of live extracts from a bunch of different gigs played in support of the band’s two most recent - and most commercially successful - albums, Lost in the Dream (2014) and A Deeper Understanding (2017). Yet it plays like it could all have been recorded at the same gig. The flow, the feels, and sense that this was, or is, a band right at the top of its game. It’s a virtual live “greatest hits”, with eight of the ten tracks coming from those two albums, including seven singles, while there’s one very early TWOD offering, ‘Buenos Aires Beach’, and a fairly choice Warren Zevon cover ‘Accidentally Like A Martyr’. I’ve never been able to put my finger on exactly what appeals most about The War on Drugs; all those classic rock touchstones - big keys, harmonica breaks, and lengthy guitar solos - and all that big Springsteen-esque Americana would usually be enough to have me reaching for the industrial-strength Nurofen, yet somehow it works. There’s some truly epic moments on Live Drugs, and highlights include wonderful versions of ‘Pain’, ‘Red Eyes’, ‘Thinking of a Place’, and ‘Under The Pressure’. No blog review.

2. Antipole - Perspectives II

If I’m going to break unwritten but notional blog rules by including live albums, then I simply have to throw in this remix album, which revisits tunes from Antipole’s 2019 album, Radial Glare. It’s a sister release for the Anglo-Norwegian dark-wavers to Perspectives (which topped this list in 2018), and it was another regular go-to album for me during the autumn lockdown period. My review is here.

1. Fontaines D.C. - A Hero’s Death

I was very slow on the uptake when it came to Fontaines D.C., somehow missing all of the initial hype surrounding the band’s debut album Dogrel (2019), before being seduced into complete and utter submission by the sheer post-punk majesty of this year’s follow-up, A Hero’s Death. I had to chuckle when I read the band’s claim in the NME, upon completion of the album in late 2019, that it “was inspired by the Beach Boys”. Yeah, only if the Beach Boys had been raised on the rain-swept streets of Dublin, consumed Guinness for breakfast, dressed entirely in black, and listened to nothing but the Velvet Underground. This is post-punk 101, 2020-style. A state-of-the-art example of raw, gritty rock n roll, propelled by big basslines, weighty guitars, and a vocalist with a thick booming Irish accent to die for. Which is more than enough, but what really gives A Hero’s Death its next level heft is its clever and artful collection of lyrics. Songs packed full of urgency, insight, irony, and humour. There’s no filler here, and tracks like ‘Televised Mind’, ‘I Don’t Belong’, ‘A Lucid Dream’, and the title track itself, would all be fully legit contenders for any notional eveythingsgonegreen tune of the year.

If there was such a thing. For now, I’ll stick to album reckons. And I’ve got no valid excuse for not giving A Hero’s Death the full review treatment on the blog. Of the ten albums covered here, four are local releases, yet I could just as easily have included a couple more (not least Darren Watson’s Getting Sober release) and I thought it was a pretty good year for homegrown stuff. More on that in my next post.

The flip side to that of course is that it was a terrible year for the local live music scene. With Covid-19, closed borders, lockdowns, and social distancing in effect for large chunks of 2020, quality live gigs were hard to come by. I can’t even really present a decent case for a gig of the year, given I attended so few. I guess it has to be The Beths at Wellington’s San Fran in October, pretty much by default. And I suppose if there was one positive to emerge from a lack of overseas touring acts, it was that local artists got more opportunities to shine as headliners when our nightlife did finally spring back into life mid-year.

Anyway, I’ll have a few more reflections on an extraordinary year over the next few weeks when I take a look at the best of the rest (albums), the best compilations and reissues, and even a post on the remarkable number of great EPs I managed to pick up during the year. In the meantime, be gone 2020. Don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out …

Album Review: Matt Berninger - Serpentine Prison (2020)

I’m pretty big fan of The National, so picking up a copy of Matt Berninger’s first full-length solo sojourn was always going to be a bit of a no brainer for me. Berninger’s baritone vocals have long been one of the most attractive features of The National’s work, so naturally I was curious to see how he would fare without the rest of the band …

The first thing to note is that Serpentine Prison is a genuine “solo album”, as opposed to being something additional from The National under another guise. Only bass player Scott Devendorf (from the band) contributes to Berninger’s project, and even then, he plays bass on just two of the album’s ten tracks.

That’s not to say there’s not some heavyweight help on hand in the form of Booker T. Jones (yes, *that* Booker T.) who produces, arranges, and offers a deft hand on Hammond organ and electric piano. There’s also Bowie-collaborator - amongst many other things - Gail Ann Dorsey, who assists with vocals (and bass), renowned multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bird who plays violin on five tracks, and a subtle brass masterclass at various points from Kyle Resnick (trumpet) and Ben Lanz (trombone). The wider contributions of Walter Martin of The Walkmen (various) and Harrison Whitford (guitars, including slide and steel) should not be overlooked either.

Little wonder then, that purely from a musical perspective, in terms of instrumentation and execution, Serpentine Prison is something close to perfect. Everything is beautifully crafted, nothing is out of place, with exactly the right amount of musical weight applied to these (mostly) gentle introspective songs. Which naturally, thankfully, brings out the best in them.

Because if I was to assess the worth of this album on the strength of Berninger’s song writing or lyricism alone, I’m not sure it would stack up quite so well. Like much of The National’s work over the past decade or so, the main themes of Berninger’s writing centre around heartbreak, relationships, and the complexities of the human condition. Which is all fine and well, but it does, over the course of ten tracks and 40-odd minutes, start to feel somewhat maudlin, and it does perhaps veer towards self-flagellation at various points. But of course, his vocals are as pristine as ever, and his voice does, after all, lend itself well to that sort of material.

Mostly though, without wanting to get too picky about it, it is a superb album. Albeit the sort of work you need to be in exactly the right frame of mind for. The sort of contemplative or reflective mood I often find myself wallowing in … so it does work for me.

Oh, and Booker T. Jones, no less!

Highlights: ‘Distant Axis’, ‘One More Second’, the Dorsey-featuring ‘Silver Springs’, ‘Take Me Out of Town’, ‘All For Nothing’ and the title track, which closes the album. A fairly big chunk of it, in fact.