Maybe you’ve heard: Taylor Swift sings on the National’s new album. She’s a great fit for the group’s brand of grown-up disquiet, but her marquee name aside, Swift’s contribution is only one of the interesting things about First Two Pages of Frankenstein, the band’s ninth LP. The bigger draw here is how the National, and particularly singer Matt Berninger, can create such a deeply absorbing world from the swirls and abstractions of an interior monologue.
For a while now, following the National has been like watching from the inside as someone’s life unfolds. Their best work embodies the essence of certain milestones, and Berninger has long excelled at capturing the tone of moments that feel important to the people living them, if no one else. There’s the high-school hero leaving glory days behind on “Mr. November,” from 2005’s Alligator; reconciling the duality of freedom and unexpected constraints of adulthood throughout 2007’s Boxer; reckoning with the complicated wonder of marriage, children and encroaching middle age on 2010’s High Violet and 2013’s Trouble Will Find Me. The band addresses a different marker this time around: First Two Pages of Frankenstein is the National’s divorce album. It’s a taut, focused collection that reins in the sprawl of the group’s 2019 release I Am Easy to Find and re-centers the band on their most emotionally complete effort since Boxer.
The breakup at the center of these songs is not acrimonious, though an amicable split with someone you still care about doesn’t always make things easier. Instead of recriminations or anger, the dominant sentiments here are sorrow and bewilderment as Berninger voices a character who is trying to adjust to the very changed emotional landscape he suddenly inhabits. “What happened to the wavelength we were on?” he sings over a propulsive beat on “Tropic Morning News.”
The album is shot through with flashes of fond, sometimes wry nostalgia for the person with whom the narrator had built a life, juxtaposed with wrenching reminders that their shared past has since branched off in separate directions. Their feelings for each other haven’t always kept pace. “You can say that this doesn’t have to hurt / You’re there if you need to be found,” Berninger (who is very much still married) sings on “This Isn’t Helping,” with help from Phoebe Bridgers. “Can’t you see that that makes it so much worse?”
The struggle to move on while staying friends, to be supportive but not smothering (or smothered), is the central theme on First Two Pages of Frankenstein. “We’re in the middle of / Some kind of cosmic rearrangement,” Berninger sings on “Grease in Your Hair,” but he doesn’t offer easy answers, because there aren’t any. That’s the idea underpinning Swift’s presence on “The Alcott,” a duet where it’s clear that both parties aren’t really sure of their footing as they wonder whether they’re better off forgetting each other, or if they’re falling back in love.
For all the emotional weight these songs carry, they are not without a certain mordant wit. Berninger makes reference on “New Order T-shirt” to the time he accidentally shut down the Honolulu airport when security thought a novelty clock in his luggage was a bomb. A track earlier, he sings “Eucalyptus” from one person’s perspective as a couple divides their possessions, each deferring to the other. “You should take it, if I miss it, I’ll visit,” he sings, though the humor is undercut by a spike of sadness when he tries to slip suggestions for making the relationship work again into the list of things they’re divvying up.
The music on First Two Pages of Frankenstein matches the mood of the lyrics, with melancholy piano taking a starring role on many of these songs. Opener “Once Upon a Poolside” starts with a somber four-note part, and Sufjan Stevens adds aching wordless harmonies in the background. Elsewhere, piano anchors “The Alcott,” “This Isn’t Helping” and “Your Mind Is Not Your Friend,” which also features delicate harmony vocals from Bridgers. Though some of the songs feel spare, there’s plenty of room for Aaron and Bryce Dessner’s guitar parts—their lead breaks on “Tropic Morning News” are cathartic, and they add moody licks on “Eucalyptus” over Bryan Devendorf’s rumbling, ever-precise drumming.
The album ends on a redemptive note with “Send for Me,” a gentle and tender ballad that suggests that somehow, everything will out for the best. That mirrors the backstory behind the album. First Two Pages of Frankenstein took shape after Berninger conquered a bout of writer’s block and depression, which led to the musicians smoothing out sometimes fractious intra-band relationships. The divorce that Berninger was imagining as he wrote these songs wasn’t his own so much as the band’s: what if, he was thinking, the National had run its course? Fortunately, given the strength of this LP, that’s a question that will go unanswered for a while longer.
Eric R. Danton has been contributing to Paste since 2013. His work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe and Pitchfork, among other publications. Follow him on Mastodon or visit his website.
