INTERVIEW - THE NATIONAL
Excerpts Published: Music Australia Guide #77, June 2010.
The National’s High Violet was made in Brooklyn, New York, by two sets of brothers and a lead singer, in a garage converted from 100-year-old stables. Aaron Dessner tells Dan Rule about life in The National.
To my ears, the arrangements on this record, while substantial, are kind of reigned in a little…
“To me the record is more cathartic and I think, musically, there are more rough edges and I think, release in this record than there is on Boxer, because a lot of Boxer is kind of very subtle and restrained and meditative. I mean, there are a few rock songs on Boxer, but for the most part it’s very restrained, whereas this record, even from the very first song, there are these very distorted, rough freak-outs.”
“I know what you mean, but we have this habit of building a lot of tension in our songs – like suspense that holds you there for a while and keeps you on the hook – and that’s something we’ve been doing for a while. But I guess we do a lot of it on this record. It’s almost religious or something, like you have to really stay with us. We don’t have a lot of changes in songs and Matt definitely doesn’t really follow that very easily. Like, if you write this music that has all these different parts, Matt won’t write to that because it’s not what he likes and it would be hard to follow. What he’s looking for is one kernel of emotion, and that one kernel of emotion is usually found in the something more repetitive.”
With the orchestration on tracks like Little Faith, you kind of shackle the string section so it never flies off or flourishes in the usual way…
“I think we use orchestration in a very integral way. A lot of times in rock music or in popular music in general, orchestration is used as icing, to make things prettier or kind of like more melodic or something. But for us, it’s much more about texture and colour and this much more kind of integral thing of using it as backdrop, like a watercolour of the horizon or something, or it’s used to subvert the harmony in some way or play a kind of foundational role.”
“So I think it’s a combination of texture and subverting the kind of harmony. Like, you’ll hear a few moments where things get turned on their head in the orchestration. It’s also about creating this kind of thick weave of accidental harmonies and intentional ones. There’s a blurriness to it all that I find really beautiful. It might be hard to penetrate for some people, but once you do penetrate it then you’re there.”
“It’s a more evolved harmonic world than Boxer, for instance, is a little more elegant. This world is a little more rough and textural. But I really do feel that this record is the sound of a band that has its wits about it; it’s a confident sound to me and a very intentional sound. Any of the tug of war you hear between epic and garage – because it runs the gamut of really rough, raw things, all the way to these really grand, orchestral, epic moments – and that was intentional. We wanted to create a really bold, grand record, but also, we really wanted to make a garage record, and literally, we recorded it in my garage. So it’s a weird mixture.”
Did you also record with Peter Katis, as well as in your garage?
“The whole record was recorded in my garage, but we mixed the record at Peter’s. We spent almost a year working at home in my garage. We’ve got a nice studio in my garage, but it’s still a garage (laughs). I own a Victorian house from the turn of the century in Brooklyn and behind all the houses in the neighbourhood, they used to have stables and at some point they were all converted to garages and that’s what I have.”
“It’s not big, but it’s big enough and did all the work there. It really allowed us to experiment more and sort of predetermine the sound a little bit more. It was also a good experience working at home and engineering some of it ourselves – although we also did that on Alligator and Boxer – but then we brought it into Peter Katis’s studio and he mixed it.”
“We spent nine weeks there, so there was quite a bit of re-recording and playing with things. It was mainly two songs – Lemonworld and Bloodbuzz Ohio – that we really worked on. Most of everything else was done in the garage.”
“It’s always an intense process for us to finish something. It’s really difficult for us, actually, just to decide that something is done. Matt really doesn’t commit to the lyrics until the very end, which makes for a very tense environment (laughs).”
I talked to Matt when Boxer came out and I was quite surprised to hear that you guys go through this extended process of putting the songs together and then he starts work on the lyrics afterwards, which will then re-inform the songs.
“Yeah.”
I don’t know if too many bands could handle that kind of labour. What kind of holds you together and holds your focus through that whole process? Is it a familial thing?
“I think it’s very important and has a lot to do with how we play music. Like, my brother and I have the ability to play very intuitively and finish each other’s thoughts in a way and mirror each other with guitars and you know, play these interlocking roles. We’re sort of born to collaborate together, basically, and I think it’s similar for Scott and Bryan – they’re very close – and the band kind of balances out really well around Matt.”
“There aren’t a lot of ego issues, even though Matt is a strong personality. He doesn’t play any instruments, but he has big opinions about music and there could be more butting of heads if we didn’t have this weird family dynamic where we all manage to laugh about it a lot, almost like it’s embarrassing that we’re even in a band.”
“We take it seriously and we love what we do, and we want to make compelling music and we want it to feel purposeful, but at the same time we’re kind of cynical about rock stardom and that kind of thing. We don’t have any assholes in the band really. We’re nice to each other generally. Obviously people get tired and there’s creative friction, but I think the family roots and all of our roots in Ohio have a lot to do with our personality as a band, in that sense of the laid back, Midwestern sensibility. That helps the band in a big way, because being in a band there can be a lot of pressure and hype and spin, and if you don’t take that in your stride and have a sense of humour about it, I think that can eat you up.”
“We laugh about every single little thing. We’re constantly making fun of our songs and ourselves and that’s a really positive thing.”
While Matt gives a lot of feedback in terms of the band’s musical direction, do you guys give him much feedback on his lyrics?
“I think we do give him feedback, especially when we think that things aren’t working. He often over thinks things and keeps wanting to change lyrics that he’s already written and start again, and sometimes he feels that he really needs to do it and there’s nothing you can do about it. But there are times when he’s just over thinking it or he’s kind of sick of himself, you know, and then we’ll step in.”
A theme of breaking free or escaping the city or something seems to resonate throughout the record. I’m not that inside the lyrics yet, to be honest…
“I think there is a nostalgia for the past and for Ohio and there is this feeling of leaving New York. I don’t think it’s so much about moving away from New York, but the feeling that people are moving around the country; one character is in LA and another one is in London and then they see each other; or there’s this feeling of going to Ohio and that your blood is in Ohio and worrying about your families and worrying about the state of things.”
“It’s a more panoramic perspective; it’s more communal; it’s less of a confessional man; it’s more voices singing, more often. I think it’s more about all of us than just about Matt.”
High Violet is out on Remote Control/Inertia
