Review of Sleep Well Beast by The National

After a four year interval since the band's last album Trouble Will Find Me, we see that the trouble has found them, and has morphed into a Beast.

Harking back to the album cover for Boxer, which saw a black and white photo of the band playing at their producer's wedding, the cover of Sleep Well Beast features a monochrome photo of the band in the studio superimposed over a chalet style structure. The wintry, claustrophobic imagery is embodied within the album itself. Immediately, the opening track Nobody Else Will Be There begins with clodding drumbeats that sound like the footsteps of a beaten man, 'Can you remind me the building you live in, I'm on my way' implores Berninger. The question remains unanswered, and the heavy footsteps trudge on into a chorus of 'Nobody else will be there then'.

Introduced by the band in promo interviews as a break-up album, all of the songs tackle the central theme head on with little space for respite. 'I swear you got a little bit taller since I saw you, I'll still destroy you' declares Berninger on I'll Still Destroy You, as if wary the listener might have permitted more optimistic thoughts to interject in the interim. While the second single Guilty Party has the highly effective refrain 'I say your name, I say I'm sorry'. The sorry lingers on in the listener's imagination, as if the singer is apologising for his thoughts, his motives, his very existence.

The other common emotion apart from self pity and hurt in a break-up scenario is self defiance and shifting the blame onto the other person, and this is shown in the more energetic songs found here. On Day I Die Berninger spits out 'I don't need you, I don't need you, Besides I barely ever see you anymore'. While on The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness the singer warns 'Maybe I listen more than you think, I can tell that somebody sold you.'

Ultimately the anger and the push-back fades back into resignation. On the final track Sleep Well Beast, Berninger's voice is stripped back to a dry croaking narration. 'Go back to sleep, let me drive, let me think, let me figure it out; How to get us back to the place where we were when we first went out' calls out the narrator, before deciding 'I'll still destroy you some day, sleep well beast, you as well beast'. 

The metaphorical Beast that the album describes is much the same as the one The National's previous three albums have been concerned with. Matt Berninger's lyrics and the sombre compositions of the Dessner brothers has been on a continuous journey to bring to life an amalgam of a F Scott Fitzgerald character - an erudite, morose, well-heeled man who seems intent on narrating his own romantic destruction. Sleep Well Beast sees this character magnified and pushed to its logical next level, in the form of a coherent concept album. 

This, alongside Boxer, is perhaps the soul of The National laid bare. They are a band for the over-educated and neurotic, those keen to analyse and define every chapter of their life, every emotion, every landmark moment. Extrapolating further, The Beast of Berninger's mind is really the post-Freudian Western world - we are self obsessed and determined to find meaning through love in a religion-free culture. We will never be rid of this Beast, we can only implore it to occasionally rest and sleep.

Leaving

They told me she wept as she left the house
For the very last time, casting a sad eye
Over the floors and stairs that now lay
Empty, devoid of even cardboard boxes

I think she may have felt ancient
Draping fingers over her wrinkles
Shocked at how the years flew
Unchecked by her consciousness

I picture her looking at her husband
No words needed to pass between them
Eventually he says something routinely
Meaningless, just to hide from that moment

I see her walking, slower and heavier
Than her years would merit, almost
Stalling, trying to just delay the
Inevitable departure

Come with me

Drop everything and come with me
Pretend like the rest of your life
Never mattered

It's a hell of a proposition
And I know that you know
I have played my last hand

I know you have propositions
From unforeseen directions
On a daily basis

How can anybody choose
When there is so little time
And so many men

All the People, Oh So Many People

All the people you'll never be
What do they need
On that restless Sunday night
Jet-lagged from weekend excesses
That never freed them from the week

All the old faces you never see
What do they decree
To be life's one defining moment
As feet are dragged slowly up stairs
To reach machine run office floors

When the New Year Comes

When the New Year Comes
Are you ready to let the old one go?
Will all your old troubles
And woes be cleansed by the snow?

Remember lost summers, fading
Into myths, dreams, something or other
Intangible, imprecise, incomplete
As you and your memory get older

Pathetic Progress

There's much too much to be done
For this train to be stalled
By inexplicable tardiness
Or overriding safety concerns

There's much too much to be done
At the termination of this journey
For minor delays, beyond control,
Of impatient passengers

There's much too much to be done
Before the day dies, as it must
But the same can't be said for
Demands that push on

Autumn never calls

Autumn never announces itself
No courtesy call just to say
'I will be there tomorrow'

Suddenly leaves are brown
Brown and dying, strewn
Across indifferent concrete ground

When schoolkids kick through
The debris of the season
To inattentive seats in lessons

When budding scholars stumble
Through freshers week floors
To gawp at dances of seduction

When workers sip in morning
Mists that accompany commutes
That siphon the days away

When retirees recline on
Benches they know will
Soon become icy thrones

We can only ruminate on
Youth once we have
Left it behind