Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE. Obviously, Sleep Well Beast does not fall in line alphabetically, but as previously explained, I'm also using this column to talk about the best albums of the 2010s. This is the next album I am discussing. Come back in December to find out where it falls in the rankings.
***LISTEN ALONG WHILE YOU READ AAAAAAAAAAH***
The last time I wrote about the National, I was drunk, and, truth be told, I am also drunk now. Let's explore what that says about me. Let's explore what that says about my relationship with this wonderful, sad, beautiful fucking band. I'd take a goddamn bullet for this band. Sleep Well Beast might be my favorite album of the decade. That's not true, I'm only saying that because I am drunk. But when I am drunk, at my darkest moments, I listen to Sleep Well Beast, and I hear an album just for me. It's literally speaking to me.
Shit, this is gonna be a bad blog post.
I'm currently listening to opening track "Nobody Else Will Be There" and I'm empathizing fucking HARD. I'm talking about the "goodbyes take a half an hour" line, that's Pam's line to empathize with. I'm talking about the "glass of gin" line. I listen to this song and I'm transported back to the Swedish History Museum for the worst night of my life.
And as if the National understand my self-loathing, they drop right into "Day I Die." This is the song where me and Matt Berninger both question whether we could possibly, in any universe, live up to the expectation of Good Husband. "The day I die / where will we be." This is a song for every couple who knows they will be together forever, but who also knows that the "forever" part is a challenge. A challenge they are up for. I'm drunk, I'm crying. This is a song for the ages. Let's not talk about Great Uncle Valentine.
I cannot fucking lose. I am ecstatic. I am a god. I just cracked open a spiked seltzer.
Here's "Walk It Back." "I won't let it ruin my head." I like this song, and I appreciate what the extended interlude is going for, but I still kind of cringe when I hear it. If there is a theory out there that says that the best albums only have 9/10s and 10/10s, then this is the 7/10 that ruins Sleep Well Beast. Listening to it now, drunk (stop), I find myself liking it a lot. But then we get to that interlude. Berninger quotes Karl Rove and his idea to completely destroy America. It pisses me off. Maybe that's the point of this song. But I don't need to hear it. FUCK trump. FUCK FUCK FUCK
Jesus christ, I dunno if I can go on doing this, walking through the whole goddamn album while intoxicated. But then I hear Bryan Devendorf's drumming on "The System Dreams in Total Darkness" and question why I'd ever want to stop listening to this goddamn stupid album. SHIT.
"Born to Beg" oh lordy please stop being me.
Do the National have an album in them of ten songs, all of them like "Turtleneck"? I hope so. This song is so bad and so goddamn good. This is the exact song that a band who played at Obama's political rallies would make now that Obama succeeded his presidency to some fucking loon. Fuck congress. Fuck trump. The National forever.
I'm getting too drunk, I'm sorry, I gotta let the National play me off to bed instead of typing about it.
Here are my closing thoughts, and take them as you will. The National has given me an album that will stay with me forever. Sleep Well Beast is the sound of Joe K*** in September 2017. I was sad and depressed and going to be a father soon and trying to survive and I did so, and maybe not with the National's help, but I can't say they DIDN'T help, ya feel me? This is the decade's anthem. We are sad. We do our best. We all sleep as well as we can.
SHIT.
Sleep Well Beast
The National
2017
***LISTEN ALONG WHILE YOU READ AAAAAAAAAAH***
The last time I wrote about the National, I was drunk, and, truth be told, I am also drunk now. Let's explore what that says about me. Let's explore what that says about my relationship with this wonderful, sad, beautiful fucking band. I'd take a goddamn bullet for this band. Sleep Well Beast might be my favorite album of the decade. That's not true, I'm only saying that because I am drunk. But when I am drunk, at my darkest moments, I listen to Sleep Well Beast, and I hear an album just for me. It's literally speaking to me.
Shit, this is gonna be a bad blog post.
I'm currently listening to opening track "Nobody Else Will Be There" and I'm empathizing fucking HARD. I'm talking about the "goodbyes take a half an hour" line, that's Pam's line to empathize with. I'm talking about the "glass of gin" line. I listen to this song and I'm transported back to the Swedish History Museum for the worst night of my life.
And as if the National understand my self-loathing, they drop right into "Day I Die." This is the song where me and Matt Berninger both question whether we could possibly, in any universe, live up to the expectation of Good Husband. "The day I die / where will we be." This is a song for every couple who knows they will be together forever, but who also knows that the "forever" part is a challenge. A challenge they are up for. I'm drunk, I'm crying. This is a song for the ages. Let's not talk about Great Uncle Valentine.
I cannot fucking lose. I am ecstatic. I am a god. I just cracked open a spiked seltzer.
Here's "Walk It Back." "I won't let it ruin my head." I like this song, and I appreciate what the extended interlude is going for, but I still kind of cringe when I hear it. If there is a theory out there that says that the best albums only have 9/10s and 10/10s, then this is the 7/10 that ruins Sleep Well Beast. Listening to it now, drunk (stop), I find myself liking it a lot. But then we get to that interlude. Berninger quotes Karl Rove and his idea to completely destroy America. It pisses me off. Maybe that's the point of this song. But I don't need to hear it. FUCK trump. FUCK FUCK FUCK
Jesus christ, I dunno if I can go on doing this, walking through the whole goddamn album while intoxicated. But then I hear Bryan Devendorf's drumming on "The System Dreams in Total Darkness" and question why I'd ever want to stop listening to this goddamn stupid album. SHIT.
"Born to Beg" oh lordy please stop being me.
Do the National have an album in them of ten songs, all of them like "Turtleneck"? I hope so. This song is so bad and so goddamn good. This is the exact song that a band who played at Obama's political rallies would make now that Obama succeeded his presidency to some fucking loon. Fuck congress. Fuck trump. The National forever.
I'm getting too drunk, I'm sorry, I gotta let the National play me off to bed instead of typing about it.
Here are my closing thoughts, and take them as you will. The National has given me an album that will stay with me forever. Sleep Well Beast is the sound of Joe K*** in September 2017. I was sad and depressed and going to be a father soon and trying to survive and I did so, and maybe not with the National's help, but I can't say they DIDN'T help, ya feel me? This is the decade's anthem. We are sad. We do our best. We all sleep as well as we can.
SHIT.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "I'll Still Destroy You"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stray Observations
- Good morning, everyone. This is sober Joe from a few days later, surveying the wreckage. It's actually not that bad, to be honest. I just want you to know that the preceding essay was written late Friday night, and certainly not at 7 AM on Wednesday, when it was published. I only wish that Drunk Joe could've stayed up to write about the rest of the album. I wonder what he would've said. Probably would've just written the same thing over and over. Maybe it's better he passed out.
- When I read Saturday morning what I had written, I was inspired to change my FB cover photo to Sleep Well Beast's album cover. That meant that I changed my profile pic to a black and white photo so they would match. Pam texted me, asking me if I had changed my profile pic to a nice picture of us because I had fucked up in some way the previous night. I had not, but given my associations with this album in September 2017, I can understand the concern.
- I had some spare notes written while also drunk, most of which I will now discarded. But I'll have you know that one of them simply says "i will fucking die for bryan devendorf," and I gotta say, Sober Joe can't quite bring himself to dispute this.
- Let's give some love to the Dessner brothers, probably the true musical masterminds behind the National. Both "I'll Still Destroy You" and the title track use the same glitchy computer-sounding theme, and that theme is so Dessner that it hurts.
- I mourn that Drunk Joe didn't get to "Carin at the Liquor Store," which might as well be called "Pam at the Liquor Store."
- Three days before this album officially dropped, the National performed it live in its entirety at Union Transfer, and the show was also streamed live on 88.5 XPN. I used to be pretty strict about not hearing albums before they were officially released, but I'm really glad that I broke that rule for this one.
- ALBUM COVER: It's a photograph of the band's recording studio, taken by photographer Graham MacIndoe. But the shape of the barn in which they were recording was then turned into a faux "corporate branding" marketing campaign for the album. See here.
- Yeoooo, new National album this spring! Who else is pumped?
- A quick dispatch from Hungover Joe
NEXT TIME: Bandwagonesque by Teenage Fanclub (we briefly head back to our alphabetical list of albums)
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