Grab your nearest bottle of wine and put on your finest gray suit, The National are back! Wednesday the band of brothers from Cincinnati announced their first record since 2013 will be titled Sleep Well Beast and has an expected release date of September 8. According to vocalist Matt Berninger, who wrote some of the album’s lyrics with his wife, the album is about “marriages falling apart,” which means two things: 1. Yikes and 2. This will be yet another dour addition to the group’s brooding discography.
New @TheNational album out Sep 8th. @pitchfork pic.twitter.com/oSCwU5lqmP
— Ghosts of the Kodiak (@GhostsOfKodiak) May 10, 2017
We suspected that a new album was on the way this week when the band and their label 4AD began teasing instrumental snippets (check those out below). It’s hard to guess what the album will sound like based on those album teases alone, but so far the visual aesthetic have amplified the aforementioned themes of strained relationships and the burden of domesticity. Semi-voyeuristic images of people living their lives behind cracked windows call to mind Todd Hido’s photography, which is perhaps most recognizable as covers for Raymond Carver’s short stories. And much like Carver and Hido’s work, The National have always excelled at painting the sadness of banality, so this seems like a spot-on visual association.
Are you looking forward to the new The National record? What era of the band’s work is your favorite? Will they appear as a musical guest on the forthcoming season of Game Of Thrones? Let us know all your thoughts and hopes in the comments and on Twitter.
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Image: Fox
