DUO FINDS ITS SOUND
Berninger teams with Knopf
There’s no mistaking Matt Berninger’s vocals: soaked in melancholy, stained with late-night wine, see-sawing between dread and cautious optimism. But long before his velvet baritone became the internationally identifiable trademark of his beloved quintet the National, Berninger was a Midwestern kid in search of his own identity.
“Most of my friends were listening to Van Halen and AC/DC and Rush, and when I discovered the Smiths, I went, ‘OK, that’s me. I connect with that,’ ” Berninger said by phone last week. “When you’re a young person … for some people it’s sports, other people it’s theatre. For me, indie or college rock, alternative rock, whatever you want to call it – that’s the thing that I was like, ‘That’s me.’ ”
Now based in L.A., Berninger recently spent considerable time reflecting on that distant past, for reasons that are rooted in the present. While the National is in hibernation, he focused on crafting the just-released album Return to the Moon with the endlessly imaginative Brent Knopf (of Ramona Falls and formerly of Menomena), under the name EL VY. Berninger, 44, found himself filtering the lyrics through a nostalgic lens, partly drawing on images from his clubgoing years in Cincinnati.
The visions of youthful freedom suit a collaboration rooted in artistic freedom. Before there was an album, before there was a name, this was a laptop lark. Having forged a friendship when Menomena toured with the National, Berninger asked Knopf around five years ago if he had any snippets of music lying around.
“He said, ‘Well, how much do you want?’ And I said, ‘Just send me everything.’ I had no idea it would be 12 hours of 450 musical bits.”
Berninger and Knopf traded ideas back and forth, tinkering with each other’s work. “We would both rip it all apart and stick it back together in different ways, and neither of us were precious about anything. That was part of the joy of it. It was slash and burn. We would throw stuff away, start new things, lop off the end, put the end on the front.”
The gleeful mix-and-match was “very organic and stress-free. No schedule, no timeline, no idea of what kind of record to make.”
Berninger estimates 20 per cent of Return to the Moon was casually jigsawed together over four years. When the National reached the end of a touring cycle last November, “we had this window and we both really dove in and really worked hard on it.”
The result reflects the process. Return to the Moon sounds both sculpted and spontaneous, crackling with the playful tension between Berninger’s elegant restraint and Knopf’s wiry hyperactivity.
“Brent was trying to put less into the songs than he does in his own things. He just throws everything at his music, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to work with him. He’s got so many ideas that every Menomena or Ramona Falls song feels like there are four or five songs in there.
“He was often trying to zero in and streamline, and go against some of his own maximalist instincts a little bit, where I was actually trying to go more in his direction and try 20 different melodies and put them all in there. … We were both pulling towards each other in different ways.”
The title track’s jittery joy, the mournful No Time to Crank the Sun and the hard-driving Happiness, Missouri suggest Berninger and Knopf’s discipline ended up overriding the anarchic working method. Elsewhere, you can sense the avalanche of inspiration on which I’m the Man to Be is perched, with cheerleader backing vocals, burbling funk and Berninger crooning lasciviously “from the perspective of a pathetic, lonely rock star in a hotel room up to no good. … It’s not 100 per cent autobiographical, but I would say I am writing about myself in that song. Just a very exaggerated version.”
It’s a funhouse-mirror view that’s reflected throughout the album. When those experiences from Berninger’s younger days pop up, they ’re often glimpsed through the eyes of the recurring characters Didi and Michael. The pair were named after hardcore heroes D. Boon and Mike Watt, thanks to Berninger’s recent fascination with the Minutemen documentary We Jam Econo.
“I was inspired by their friendship and how they found themselves and each other. These two misfits found their identities through making noise together in D. Boon’s mom’s basement.”
Which connects to how Berninger found himself. In the wistful Paul Is Alive, he mentions Cincinnati’s Jockey Club, “which is actually a club that I never set foot in, because it closed when I was 14 years old. But my older cousin Peter would always talk about it. He saw the Ramones there, and Black Flag there, and Minutemen there. It was this mythical, legendary sort of place. … I think I set a lot of the album’s story there.”
The Jockey Club almost provided Berninger and Knopf with more than a setting for their songs. “We were trying to come up with a name that didn’t sound like a band name. … At one point we were going to call it Jockey Club, but somebody told us it sounded like some sort of club for underwear.”
So they settled on a name that “looks like two sets of initials” and whose meaning will be dissected in vain, because there is none. “We say that it’s the plural of Elvis, but only to help people pronounce it. Because the plural of Elvis is not Elvy – it’s Elvises. So that doesn’t even make any sense.” Just as Berninger and Knopf haven’t overthought their name, or their music, they won’t be overthinking the live presentation on tour, which includes a stop at Montreal’s Théâtre Fairmount on Nov. 16. “It’s not going to be a sloppy show,” Berninger said, “but it’s probably going to be kind of reckless. I think it’s going to be really, really fun.” The singer says there won’t be songs by the National, Ramona Falls or Menomena on the set list, but there will be Matt Sheehy of Lost Lander on bass and Wye Oak’s Andy Stack on drums. And there should be some covers, “if we can figure them out.”
In the 14 years since its debut album, the National’s trajectory on its Montreal visits has ascended from half-empty bars to sold-out mid-size clubs, to a penultimate main-stage slot at 2010’s Osheaga and headlining engagements at the Bell Centre (2011) and the sprawling Lachine Canal esplanade (2013). So one might imagine that part of the appeal for Berninger is Return to the Moon prompting a return to intimate venues. But that would be overthinking again.
“I’m no more terrified in an arena than I am in a tiny club,” he said, “but the level of excitement and joy of the whole experience is kind of the same, too. So I can’t wait.”
We say that it’s the plural of Elvis, but only to help people pronounce it. Because the plural of Elvis is not Elvy – it’s Elvises. So that doesn’t even make any sense. Matt Berninger