Stately Intimacy: The National, Live in London

It’s funny, this idea of The National as a chart-topping band. They may well fill arena after arena, but to these ears their true potency lies in their eccentricities, their oddest and ugliest aspects, rather than their ability to capture the pop zeitgeist or wrap their adoring public around a hooked chorus. Perhaps tonight’s venue choice reflects this, as indeed does the setlist. The performance opens as Sleep Well Beast, with the tremulous, whispered “Nobody Else Will Be There”, whose nagging percussive details and lackadaisical piano line veil their implicit anxieties as thinly as Matt Berninger’s lyrics do their gin-soaked misanthropy. Music like this isn’t written to fill football stadia or aircraft hangers; it’s designed to be wrung slowly through a rapt audience, within spitting distance of its creators.

Having said all that, The National are a band of many modes. It’s not long, for example, before the new album’s lead track, “The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness” blasts through this grand old theatre, its monolithic keys and juddering guitars whipping the crowd into a frenzy. It sounds enormous in here, a lumbering behemoth of a song that would threaten to become oppressive were it not for its relative brevity. Berninger's voice manages to keep up with it admirably, sounding as rich and controlled as it ever has. In fact, his whole performance tonight, save for one misstep in the encore that leads to the band skipping a song (luckily, one of the weaker tracks from the new album), seems far more comfortable and invigorated than perhaps ever before. He wades through the crowd several times, well in advance of his customary (and, these days, inevitable) jaunt during the closing strains of "Mr November", and when he's on stage he's far more kinetic and excitable than he's appeared in the past.

As for the rest of the band, they're in predictably fine fettle tonight, weaving their intricate soundscapes upon the solid foundation of Bryan Devendorf's surging, tentacular drums. Like their singer, the instrumentalists exude a certain ease tonight, the most obvious explanation for which is the vindication that comes with such superlative chart success, but which may also be attributed to the strength of the setlists that they’re able to create these days. The National are a long way into their career, and the glorious luxury of being able to rummage through their discography on a whim and pull out songs of the quality of “The Geese of Beverly Road” or “Daughters of the Soho Riots” doesn’t seem to be lost on them.

The sound engineering doesn’t always flatter these restrained, lesser-heard cuts; “Lemonworld”, for example, loses a little of its bleak, dirgey beauty to an overly trebly mix. Mostly though, tonight’s set operates as a perfect example of why this band continue to grow as an international concern nearly two decades after their formation. The National are a band of contradictions, of awkward balances between self-loathing and braggadocio, professionalism and humanity, the intimate and the grand, the intensely personal and the earnestly political. Their many sides are showcased superbly tonight, and, more obviously than ever before, this most anxious group of musicians actually look like they might be enjoying themselves.