[Welcome to Sophomore/Sophomoric, where we'll catalog the tiptoed journeys of the literally thousands of bands who have attempted, not all of them successfully, to navigate their way from debut success and past the proverbial "sophomore slump" into the rarefied air of "sophomore glory." Is that a term? It'd be better if it was alliterative. How about, "sophomore splendor"? That works better, yeah.]

Words by Jacob Barron

Artist: The National
Albums: The National (2001) and Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers (2003)

Conventional wisdom states that the National became a glowing orb of sentient greatness in 2005, with the release of Alligator. It then went on a quest through time in order to destroy its chief human rival in the future war of the machines, a quest that would eventually be their undoing. Oh no wait, that’s the plot of The Terminator. My bad guys. Mulligan.

The National / American Mary
The National / Available

Before Alligator though, the National were already a band, and a good one at that, having release two albums. One of them seems to have been largely ignored, even by the band itself (their self-titled debut) while the sophomore effort received a tad more attention. I last saw the National a couple years ago, at what I think was the first Virgin FreeFest, following a rousing and irony-laden performance by Public Enemy, Flava Flav included. “We pretty much do the same thing” mumbled the National’s frontman, Matt Berninger, in reference to Public Enemy. It received a smattering of laughter, most notably from yours truly, who let go one of those laughs that was disproportionately louder than everyone else’s polite chuckles

Anyway, at some point thereafter, the band launched into “Available,” a song I had at that point heard perhaps three times, and from that moment I became a National completist. I put my fist in the air and screamed along with Berninger, to the chagrin of my girlfriend and all around me who were sober enough to hear sounds. “Available” is probably the first big song by the National, a song that, objectively speaking, evokes a lot of post-rock tropes that could’ve been dusted off by any one of a hundred other bands. But it succeeds on Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers because of its energy. On an album of admittedly intelligent, yet frequently sleepy, tunes, “Available” is like a kick in the nuts, along with “Murder Me Rachael,” another classic that anticipated songs like “Abel” from Alligator.

There’s no getting around the fact that Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers is a brilliant piece of work, far more polished than its predecessor from a recording standpoint, and filled with calmly devastating moments. Opener “Cardinal Song” honestly sounds like late-era acoustic Sigur Ros replaced with a muscular baritone singer, and “90-Mile Water Wall” is about as close to the barn as the band has ever come. It’s hard to hear now, but the National’s first two albums really place them alongside early Wilco, before the band decided to break alternative country altogether. I think of the National as a quintessentially urban band now, but here they sound much more midwestern, which I guess makes sense since they were formed in Cincinnati, but still. Both the National and Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers sound like they’re somewhere between the chicken coop and the studio apartment, straddling the line between rural and urban, but too dim and gothic to really be suburban. They’re albums without a country, and thereby albums of all countries, if that makes any sense.

The National presents a case, however, that makes me wonder if you can predict sophomore success with any accuracy. Their self-titled debut, as previously implied, sounds a lot dimmer from an audiophile’s perspective, and it’s even more alternative-country than its successor. If I had to pick one predictor of sophomore success though, I’d pick vision; while it’s not as shiny as Sad Songs, the National is still purely the band’s vision, and it’s a complete one. Berninger’s lyrics here get at the same things they always get at, which is to say they get at the universal things felt by people ages 21-40. He’s a bit more petulant and brash than on later works, nowhere more so than on “Theory of the Crows,” where he half-drunkenly sings “I’ll suck off investors / I’ll suck off VCs / I’m losin’ my posture / From time on my knees.”

Berninger has a track record of somehow pulling off sexual references that no other lyricist can, without sounding as childish as he does here, but the point is often the same. Some people can write about
late 20s malaise without addressing the inherent, sometimes suffocating pressure of sexual desire among the demo, but Berninger weaves it into his tales of deeply personal, depressingly minor rebellion, and did so from the start. He’s saying it like a younger man, but he knows what he wants to say, and that’s a blessed thing for the band and their debut record.

And that’s the point really. This is a band that knew what it wanted to be, and they got by on vision for their first two albums, which are equally great. They’d go on to more fully flesh out that initial vision, in all its malaise and grimy glory, on Alligator and on every other album since then, but none of them would probably have been as good if they hadn’t been built on such a sturdy foundation.

Step Forward, Step Back, or Lateral Move?: Lateral Move

Filed under: Not Blake, Jim, or Brendan, Sophomore/Sophomoric