At their best, the National spins grand tales of dejection and failed interpersonal connections. The band’s songs often seethe with the frustrations of miscommunication, of not being able to satisfy someone else’s needs. First Two Pages of Frankenstein offers more cathartic indie-rock melodrama in this vein, and while it doesn’t necessarily break new ground for the group, it’s an exemplary display of what they do best.
The National’s 2019 album I Am Easy to Find was a canny move on the band’s part, employing a panoply of voices—almost entirely women—to decenter frontman Matt Berninger’s dominating baritone and the group’s customarily morose, albeit highly entertaining, pity parties. On First Two Pages of Frankenstein, the National have retreated back to their typical first-person perspective, as Berninger’s internal struggles mingle with—and are amplified by—the Dessner and Devendorf brothers’ understated yet meticulous studio tinkering.
The album, though, does rope in some high-profile guests, like Taylor Swift, Sufjan Stevens, and Phoebe Bridgers (who appears on two tracks), but they’re largely relegated to backup-singer status. This could constitute a knock against the album—that external voices are only used to make the echo chamber of Berninger’s sad-sack musings louder and more deafening. But it allows the frailty of his narrator to come to the fore, and devastatingly so.
Songs like “Eucalyptus,” on which Berninger rattles off a list of items—“undeveloped cameras…the instruments,” and so on—that he decides a departing partner should keep because he’s “just gonna break it,” are rife with palpable pain. “This Isn’t Helping” finds him rejecting an ex-lover’s attempts to let him down easy—“You say this doesn’t have to hurt…Can’t you see that that makes it so much worse?”—but the way the track’s percussive piano and drums are in lockstep allows us to find a kind of ecstatic communion in the relational discord being described.
Occasionally, such stylings verge on the generically anthemic on First Two Pages of Frankenstein. “Tropic Morning News” can feel a little jejune in its combination of stiff backbeat and earnest, mid-song guitar overture. In general, though the National has slowly introduced more electronic elements in their work over the last half-decade or so, it can still be a gamble to use a drum machine when you’ve got drummer Bryan Devendorf among your ranks.
The songs here are otherwise richly stacked with detail and sonic shadings. This fastidiousness makes things like the glint of hope that emanates from the piano melody of closer “Send for Me” register all the more deeply. Following 10 songs that describe people pushing each other away or drifting apart, Berninger leaves the door open for intimacy: “Send for me whenever, wherever,” he suggests, even though it comes as a seeming addendum to his character’s parting words (“Please, don’t forget”). Still, his plea of “run out to me now” may actually be a breakthrough for him, where he’s able to get out of his head and take action. Or at least beg someone else to.
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