Love for The National decidedly local
As moody Brooklyn quintet hits town again, bands finds it ‘very comforting’ Toronto always welcomes them with open arms
That the National enjoys the broad popularity it does anywhere is something of a beautiful aberration, yet few towns have got behind the moody Brooklyn quintet with as much vigour as Toronto.
Maybe this city has a darker heart than it realizes, maybe our music fans are disproportionately inclined toward the “bookish.”
But the National has been welcomed back to Toronto with open arms again and again since its first local gig at the Horseshoe Tavern 13 years ago, proving itself a massive festival draw in recent years with a free 2013 gig for North by Northeast at Yonge-Dundas Square that drew a whopping 20,000 people and a subsequent, Saturdaynight headlining slot for Field Trip at Fort York in 2016.
The band returns to Fort York Saturday for yet another festival-styled gig organized by their longtime pals at Collective Concerts that also features Father John Misty, Jenny Lewis, Julien Baker and Dan Edmonds. Ticket sales are already well in excess of 7,500.
“We love coming to Toronto,” affirms bassist Scott Devendorf, enjoying a day off between a show in Detroit and a Friday night slot at Lollapalooza in Chicago.
“We’ve played many, many a venue over the years and it’s nice to be able to play some of the bigger shows, too. We’ve always kind of done our own thing, so it’s nice that it’s kind of panned out in Toronto. . . . It’s very comforting.”
Credit, of course, must be given to the National’s fan base, which has stuck with the band — professorial frontman Matt Berninger, guitarist/multiinstrumentalist brothers Bryce and Aaron Dessner, and the sibling rhythm section of Scott and drummer Bryan Devendorf.
“We’ve always kind of done our own thing, so it’s nice that it’s kind of panned out in Toronto.” SCOTT DEVENDORF THE NATIONAL BASSIST
Support has grown steadily, even as its musical vision has grown more shadowy, more nuanced and more challenging through such dark-hued hit records as 2010’s High Violet, 2013’s Trouble Will Find Meand last year’s decidedly cryptic Sleep Well Beast. The latter even managed a No. 1 debut on Billboard’s Canadian albums chart.
It turns out there is an audience out there thirsting for thoughtful, literate pop music, after all.
And it’s not lost on Devendorf how fortunate his band happens to be that it’s the one that audience has latched onto over the past decade or so.
“It seems that way because we’re always told our music is a ‘grower,’ and that it takes a while for people to process or sort of get into or whatever,” he says.
“So yeah, we’re happy with this last record because it was playing to some of our favourite things at the time we recorded it and those are slightly more left-field than some of our more meat-and-potatoes rock songs from the early days.
“I think it’s always, at least for us internally, important to us to keep it interesting and to grow, in a way. I also think we’re always guilty of being very precious about our songwriting, so trying to break that up a little bit was a goal. So it’s nice and it’s interesting, and I’m glad that people are able to engage with it.”
Beyond the fact that the National makes interesting, oddly anthemic music that’s of a piece with the 21st century’s endlessly troubled vibe, its ongoing success in Toronto can be traced to a diligent work ethic and patient supporters at both its small Canadian record company, Beggars Group — of which its label, 4AD, is a part — and at the concert-promotion level.
Toronto radio has never really paid a great deal of attention to the National, although the CBC’s Q program was an early adopter. The band’s rise here has, thus, been accomplished by putting boots on the ground and coming back to play again and again.
“It’s really an old-fashioned album campaign where each tour got bigger — and we started at the very bottom pre the release of Alligator in 2005 — and each record got bigger,” observes Beggars’ David Freeman.
“I think we also benefited from the fact that the band had personal ties to the city and the country, and always made sure that we were on the itinerary. Collective certainly helped the cause, nurturing them from Lee's Palace to three consecutive Massey Hall sellouts to Fort York.
“It shows what can happen when the band, record company and promoter are all pulling in the same direction at the same time.”
Collective Concerts’ Jeff Cohen and Craig Laskey are of the same mind.
As Laskey recalls, there were only about 200 people at the Horseshoe for the National’s Sept. 18, 2005 gig there in support of Alligator, “but the buzz from that show was tremen- dous and so, when we brought them back to the ’Shoe five months later, they sold it out in advance.”
From there, Collective slowly moved the band to ever larger venues, selling out the Opera House, the Phoenix and eventually the old Kool Haus in 2009 before upsizing to the Air Canada Centre (albeit in “theatre” mode) in 2009 and a threenight run at Massey Hall on the High Violet tour. The latter of which is immortalized in a climactic moment in the 2013 tour documentary Mistaken for Strangers where a wine-soaked Berninger makes a run for the exits atop the seats on the floor.
The band has some Canadian connections, too.Its manager, Brandon Reid, is an expat. And the National is collectively in thrall to the catalogue of their friend and one-time tourmate Hayden. Devendorf, in fact, is still hoping to coax the latter onstage for at least a song on Saturday.