More from Matt Berninger
ON EL VY’S FUTURE:
“I do think we’ll probably make another record in a couple years, just because this happened in such an organic and casual way. Not without effort and work, but it never felt like work.”
ON THE NATIONAL’S FORTHCOMING SEVENTH STUDIO ALBUM:
“I don’t know if we’re at the beginning of the middle or toward the end of the middle, but I know we’re in the middle. … We’re going to do some touring in 2016, and we’ve been talking about trying to play as many (new) songs as possible live over the next summer before we go into the studio … so you’ll probably first hear a significant section of the next National record in really bad iPhone videos.”
ON LOVING HIS DAY JOB:
“The National has never, ever tried to rein me in. ... Those guys trust me and I trust them, and we’ve all learned how our different gifts, or whatever you want to call them, work together. … When they slam up against each other, that’s often where the most exciting things happen. And so it wasn’t at all like I felt I couldn’t do something in the National and this was my outlet for doing it.”
ON COOTER’S, A FAVOURITE CLUB FROM HIS YOUTH IN CINCINNATI:
“On Sundays they’d have a thing called Beat Club where they would play Ministry and Bauhaus. I would dress goth – I had my s---ty, s---ty haircut and I’d wear a trench coat and combat boots – and I would go dance and try to meet girls with shaved heads and eyeliner. And I just was in love with these goth girls – none of whom I ever spoke to or ever met. I never had an actual romance at that point in my life. But it was like, ‘This is me. This is my world.’ ”