Yesterday I saw The National live for a third or fourth time, this time at London's iconic Alexandra Palace, aka
Ally Pally.
It had been six years since I last
saw them, so plenty had happened in between, particularly this year when
they released their latest two
records, First Two Pages of Frankenstein and Laugh Track, just a few months apart of each other.
The
night promised to be an epic one as we also celebrated a good friend's
birthday while embarking on a journey filled with melancholy, weirdly
mixed with a
camouflaged beat that gives The National this unique ability to be
the only band that I know of capable of having people dance to the sound
of misery.
And if that statement is
something I've been saying for years now, in this gig, I took it a notch further, by claiming that it's the first time
I've ever danced with tears coming down my face.
It's a weird thing to share...
Hell, it's a weird thing to experience all together.
There wasn't a triggering moment that I thought of, just the sheer beauty and rawness of the music,
combined with Matt Berninger's delivery, who, at 52, is still able to
inflict a mixture of pain, nostalgia and hope in his performance.
Plenty
of new tracks were played throughout the evening, with Once Upon a Poolside (without the help of Sufjan Stevens) kicked off the gig and soon after Tropic Morning News, New Order T-shirt, Dreaming and near the end Space Invaders.
Older stuff was intertwined, like Abel, Guilty Party, Mistaken for Strangers (which gave way to the name of their 2013 documentary), Day I Die, (the colossal) Mr
November and - of course - Fake Empire.
The highlight for me, however, came from the High Violet record, released in 2010 and - in my opinion - their finest work to date.
Bloodbuzz
Ohio gave me the first goosebumps of the night (that line "I never thought about love, when I thought about home", gets me every single time)...
England got everyone in their feels...
Vanderlyle Crybaby Geek - a track that for the life of me I couldn't remember (!!!) - got the whole venue to close out the evening by singing beautifully like a church choir, as the band stood on stage delighted at the wonderful sight.
An unforgettable
moment that made me forgive the band for not playing several of my other favorite songs:
About
Today (made popular with the 2011 movie Warrior), Terrible Love, I
Need My Girl, Secret Meeting, Start a War, Runaway, Afraid of
Everyone, Think You Can Wait (from the 2011 movie Win Win)
and my personal favorite Sorrow (which the band famously played at a gig a 108 times, totaling six straight hours).
As you can see, enough tunes to compile a whole new record.
Fortunately for me, I've had my time with those songs in the past and I'm sure other opportunities will follow in years to come.
