The National on new music: “It’s the whole history of the band, but with a new exploration”

nme.com:

The National‘s Bryce Dessner has spoken to NME about what to expect from the band’s new material, as well as looking ahead to their remaining summer shows.During their run of 2022 festival dates, the indie veterans have been playing a number of brand new songs.

Among them is ‘Weird Goodbyes’, a collaboration with Bon Iver which is due to be released imminently.Speaking to NME about the new batch of tracks, Dessner said: “We wanted to road-test songs.

The journey that we were on from [2001 debut] ‘Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers’ through to [2019 album] ‘I Am Easy To Find’ was non-stop.

There was no breaking between writing and releasing those albums. Just by nature of various things like COVID and things going on in our individual lives, we’ve been able to take time with the new material.“Not only are some of the songs informed by playing them live, but we’ve even been recording them in soundchecks from the stage and recording incredibly loud live guitars.”He continued: “The songs are quite far along, but we’re discovering things about them in real-time.