The National by Graham MacIndoe
The National announced it at their Homecoming Festival last weekend.
The National have given an immediate release to Laugh Track, the band’s second new album of 2023.
Recorded during the same sessions which resulted in First Two Pages Of Frankenstein earlier this year, the 12 tracks on this record have taken a different direction when compared with that predecessor which Live4ever summed up as, ‘the sound of Matt Berninger’s personal rain turning into a downpour’:
If there the physical artefacts of everything that’s gone faultlessly to shit are unwanted by either parties like they were a war’s empty shell casings, on the other hand New Order T-shirt’s stream of consciousness prose is made up of the sort of highly curated good memories we reward ourselves with after the grief begins to ebb away.
“As with its predecessor, First Two Pages Of Frankenstein shares some of the public burden with collaborators who are no strangers to the territory, but the results are mixed.”
“The tone setting austerity of opener Once Upon A Poolside features Sufjan Stevens – although whatever the contribution, it’s buried somewhere in the ether.”
Laugh Track tracklist:
Alphabet City
Deep End (Paul’s in Pieces)
Weird Goodbyes (feat. Bon Iver)
Turn Off the House
Dreaming
Laugh Track (feat. Phoebe Bridgers)
Space Invader
Hornets
Coat on a Hook
Tour Manager
Crumble (feat. Rosanne Cash)
Smoke Detector