This show was part of a wonderfully curated series by HU Presents, who continue to bring the best music possible to Harrisburg and Pennsylvania.
Life is well-governed by the quietest loves and the loudest loves, with all those in-between half-forgotten. The moments when a snore tumbles onto a shoulder, a purr or a harrumph burbles against a lap; announcing a union in front of a family (given and chosen alike), laughing so late into the evening it becomes morning.
The National embodies the interplay of loud and quiet.
On the edges of the Harrisburg Riverfront, its shiny park and shimmering bridges, Indigo Sparke took to the stages as the last remnants of a blushing sky gave way to the gloaming, her songs tinted blue and lilted with the same constant and ineffable beauty. She cycloned in a checkered dress and got lost in her own songs. The band rippled around her like thunder, the guitarist cracking open the riverfront and the drummer breaking the breeze.
Her new record, Hysteria, will be a thing of wonder. Songs like “Blue”, “Pressure in My Chest”, the torrential “Burn”, and the title track all shimmer, auguring a bigger sound than her debut album Echo.
This was her last show of the current tour (The National visited the Sound on Sound fest the next night without her), and with this showing, I’d not be surprised to see her play well-sized clubs of her own when she comes back to the area. I hope she headlines the 9:30 Club; I think these songs will soar.
Some decade ago, about 5 years or so into my infatuation with The National, someone somewhere called The National torchbearers of New Sincerity, an artistic movement in pursuit of recovering lost idylls and purity.
I have rarely reacted to a written idea with such vitriol. Their sincerity is undeniable, but there is no pursuit of that thing which once was; these songs tangle laments with acceptance and grandiosity, flecked generously with oblique metaphors that betray a sense of hope snarled even further with the shadows of self-loathing and depression.
And yet, Matt Berninger and Carin Besser (The National’s married songwriters, with the former their charismatic frontman) do reject cynicism, almost reacting to it. They project an earnestness, a drive to live despite the suffering of a lived life.
With their shows, The National prove that community is the center of all humanity and connection is the only way to embrace existence.
The river is everywhere, and it disproves time.
As they came onto the stage in the blackening night under a train overpass, Berninger stepped to the mic to talk about rivers and bridges. His great uncle died under a bridge (“true story”, he chuckled), and in a way, it changes the story of “Val Jester”, if only a little.
And then they rode a current across the years, beginning with “Don’t Swallow the Cap”, its “careful fear and dead devotion” tattooed on the passing winds; they followed with the first National song I ever loved, “Mistaken for Strangers”, making me stop in the pit to watch in awe and sing along.
There is something in these songs that’s difficult to explain. The self inhabits them strangely: the wanted life , the planned life, the forgotten life, the unknown life, and the lived life. There is a tension, an almost-inexpressible thing that quivers where the amygdala meets the hippocampus; on this night in Harrisburg, The National delivered this sense of emotion, that uneasy feeling that defines the strain of who we are and who we are not.
To introduce the third song, Berninger tilted the micstand and shared that the band was shaped by a river on the banks of Cincinnati, he said, with Aaron agreeing immediately. And so they dipped into “Bloodbuzz Ohio”, a song as colored by the Ohio River and the long shadows of the Carew and PNC Towers as by Manhattan’s claustrophobia and Brooklyn’s anxious nausea.
It is easy to get lost in your blood’s memory.
Theirs is an oeuvre that beggars passive listening, asking its listeners to attend to the details, the flourishes the playing, the narratives. There are moments of musical and lyrical amusement, but I think, ultimately, the truest truths of their songs are Berninger’s offhanded lines, the Dessners’ explorations of static rippling with melody, the Devendorfs’ steady and endless heartbeats announcing themselves in moments of elation. Songs like “System Only Dreams in Total Darkness” and “This is the Last Time” and “Apartment Story” all embodied this down by the Harrisburg river, but they brought something new: we could just soak in the songs together.
Berninger ran around the stage like the madman he’s always been, in his cups just enough to swerve from a baritone croon to a bloodletting yawp (I’m looking at you, “Day I Die” and new song “Tropic Morning News”). The Dessners swell the songs to crescendos and the crowd adds their backing vocals.
It is real catharsis. And we needed it.
In the back-end of the set, they invited Indigo Sparke to sing and dance along for a swirling rendition of “Rylan”, following with the other I Am Easy to Find favorite “Light Years” (perfect this night). They slid into a wild rendition of “Pink Rabbits” and gifted the audience “England”, but the highlights came in the center of the set, the end, and its encore.
“Conversation 16” is my favorite song by The National. I only came to terms with this fact on September 24th, 2022 while green lights flickered and Berninger sang over the band’s clangor, “I was afraid / I’d eat your brains” and then yelled “‘cause I am evil”. As throughout most of the show, he came to the edge of the stage to engage directly with the audience, separated sometimes by a barricade and other times by nothing at all, as he stood atop the metal bars and reached out a hand. On one hand, the messianic can be discomfiting, and on the other, it offers a small salvation in the dark of night.
He ran into the audience as he always does, this time on “Graceless.” He walked down the side of the stage, ran around a tree, and sprinted into the crowd. They followed him, their Pied Piper shouting “but it would be a shame to waste this”, leading them gracefully through the gracelessness of our shattered world: unhinged, beautiful, together. We yowled and howled together, and those of us between Berninger and the stage held aloft the cord so he could tread ever deeper until his circuit turned him back. He clambered onto the stage and breathed deeply while the Dessners and Devendorfs carried the flowers to a vase.
The encore was a gift to every audience on this tour. “Weird Goodbyes” into the incendiary “Mr. November” and then the tidal pull of “Terrible Love.”
But the biggest gift of all was “About Today” floating across the river.
The National dance on the edge of a blade in every show, just barely avoiding a loss of sense. Berninger cultivates that tension, the band around him builds skyscrapers of sound, and the audience explodes with him. It is a swirling thing, sensual and dark. It is the river at night.
I hope you get to see them. I hope you buy their records.
