IN THE MAJOR LEAGUE

WHILE Glastonbury may not be returning next year – the iconic music festival is taking a ‘gap year’ – that fact hasn’t stopped its organisers from suggesting artists who might have headlined 2018’s event. Indeed, when Emily Eavis, Glasto’s band booker, was recently interviewed, she didn’t hesitate in naming one band who had sufficient clout to headline the famous festival: American indie-rock giants The National.

“That was really flattering to hear,” says Matt Berninger, The National’s frontman and lyricist. “It’s something we’d love to do one day. I think we’re at the stage in our career when we’d be ready for something as big as that.”

Of course, besides Emily Eavis’ Glasto endorsement, there has, in recent years, been ample evidence to suggest that The National have finally made the promotion to rock’s major league.

Formed in Cincinnati in 1999, before relocating to their longterm base Brooklyn, New York, The National’s journey from plucky indie underdogs to globestraddling rock titans took almost a decade to be realised.

Very much a slow-burning success story, the band’s early days, during the early 2000s, saw them juggling day-jobs and playing to tiny crowds while inherently ‘cooler’ NYC bands like the Strokes and Interpol ascended into the mainstream.

The National kept plugging away, however, and following a string of breakthrough albums – including their 2007 classic LP Boxer – the band soon found themselves rubbing shoulders with international rock elite. The band’s last release, 2013’s Trouble Will Find Me, went top three both here and Stateside, and was Grammy-nominated for Best Alternative Album.

Fast forward to 2017, and with the band edging ever nearer toward their 20th anniversary, frontman Berninger couldn’t be more grateful for his band’s slow-burning rise to stardom.

Reflecting on his band’s early struggles, he says: “Those things definitely gave us perspective. I do think that if you get a big, glossy photo of yourself in a magazine too soon, you think you’re there already. We had a healthy self-deprecating humour… we never let ourselves believe we were bigger than we were. We were constantly knocking each other down egowise. But then when we needed it, we would inflate each other. The fact that it was happening slower maybe allowed us to have the time and perspective and an extra night’s sleep to wake up and go, ‘All right, I’m not walking away yet.’”

The band’s latest album, their seventh, Sleep Well Beast, should further consolidate their place within modern rock’s top