“It looks like the El Vy stuff is going to keep on going,” says Berninger, now residing in Venice, Los Angeles with his wife, daughter and brother Tom, who made the 2013 National documentary Mistaken for Strangers. “We’re actually going to be playing three songs at the TED conference in Vancouver – I’m heading over there tomorrow. We’ve got a handful of things in the pipeline, too. Putting out the album and touring in support of it was such a blast. We got to play these really intimate rooms – places that I haven’t had the chance to play in years. When you’re seeing The National these days, most of the places that we play have the big security barriers and a big moat between you and the audience. I had missed that intimacy – that’s actually a part of why I started going out into the crowd during our shows. It was great to have people right up against the stage again. We enjoyed it so much that we’re already starting work on the next record.”
Despite affirmations that El Vy is not just a one-off, Berninger is quick to clarify that it remains a side project for both him and Knopf, who also makes music under the moniker of Ramona Falls. “It’s funny – I was working on El Vy songs the whole time I was on tour with The National,” he says, “Then, when El Vy were on tour, I was working on new songs for The National up the back of the bus. I’ve always sort of juggled more than one thing. Working with my brother and my wife on the documentary… that all took place as we were making Trouble Will Find Me. For me, I don’t think of any of these projects as being separated by a big barrier. It all weaves into one another. It’s a good, healthy thing – for me and for all the other guys in the band. We all know everyone who works on our other projects intimately. It’s basically a big extended family.”
The National themselves are back in session, hard at work on their seventh LP. Though, nothing is yet set in stone regarding the album – it has no title, no tentative release date and not even a nascent tracklist. However, the singer is incredibly excited about what’s potentially coming up for The National – he sees the album as a chance to explore what the band’s capable of and leave their comfort zone.
“We’re pretty deep into making this record right now,” he says. “We had a big batch of about 30 songs that we played around with in the studio when we were starting out. Now Aaron and Bryce are sending me even more new stuff to work with. Sometimes they’ll just send over a loop, I’ll put it into GarageBand and if I find myself drawn to it, I listen to it over and over. It’s weird – sometimes they’ll send over these beautiful little sketches of songs and I will have absolutely no idea where my place is in it. You never know what it’s going to feel like. We’re exploring and experimenting right now and there’s about ten songs that are really starting to take over my focus. They’re songs that I feel are just dying to be written. I’ve never been this excited and motivated to try new things on record. The things that are coming out of this process… a lot of it is different to what we’ve done in the past. We’re trying to push the boundaries on our own terms.”
Berninger is an outlier in The National insofar as he is the only member who cannot play an instrument, as well as being the only member without a brother in the band. It’s perhaps this dynamic, however, that has assisted in him becoming one of the most revered frontmen in contemporary indie rock. Every last word is held onto by the band’s adoring listenership, sung back in a mass refrain – which is interesting, considering that a lot of the time what ends up on the record is literally a stream of consciousness response to the music Berninger’s been sent.
“I don’t usually really pay that much attention to what the songs are about until they’re almost finished,” he says. “You could throw one little phrase into a song somewhere and it ends up becoming the chorus. I could use a lyric as a placeholder, just ad-libbing or something like that, and the other guys will get really attached to it. I never find it that helpful to know exactly what I write about. I wait to find what’s in my head at the moment I’m hearing the songs. I think I was preoccupied, lyrically, with mortality for a while. I feel like I wrote a lot about that on Trouble Will Find Me, and I know it wound up a little bit into the El Vy record. I’m at a point now, after years of being hedonistic, where I see life as being good, something precious and to be taken care of. I’m thinking a lot about my place in the human race, as a part of the continuum. I’ve been thinking about what we do with our little piece.”
2016 will primarily see Berninger and The National focused on completing – and hopefully releasing – their seventh album. Before climbing that mountain, however, the band will be back in the southern hemisphere for a whirlwind visit. The National are booked as festival exclusives for Byron Bay’s Bluesfest, joining the likes of Brian Wilson, D’Angelo, Modest Mouse and Tom Jones; as well as Auckland City Limits in New Zealand, where they will be joined by Kendrick Lamar, Girl Talk, Action Bronson and Cold War Kids. Despite the demand, The National will not be playing any other sets.
“If you’d have told me ten years ago that this band would be at a point where we could fly halfway across the world, play two shows and then go back again, I’d have never believed you,” laughs Berninger. “Especially if those two shows were in Byron Bay and Auckland, of all places. We’re looking forward to the break from the studio. As much as we want to keep making the record, it’s good to shake the vibe of it and shake up your chemistry a little bit. It’s invigorating for us. We might even play one or two songs we’ve been working on, just to see how people respond to it.
“Besides everything else, we get to see each other again. Everyone has this idea of bands just hanging out together all the time – we honestly don’t get to do it all that much. We all have kids, apart from Bryce, and we’re still trying to balance out our work and family life as much as possible. I mean, you’re telling me we get a break from being husbands and dads for a week to go hang out in Byron Bay and be rockstars? We live very fortunate lives.”
