THE NATIONAL - Laugh Track (2023), listens #3 and on

It took forever to come up with a big summary statement about Laugh Track.  (Spoiler:  I like it.  But if you don't want eighty-three thousand words attempting to articulate exactly why, then why are you reading this blog?)  It's been some time since I've had this hard a time putting my finger on my exact opinion of a record, though.  Even late listens vary as far as which songs connect more or less with me.

Interestingly, another listen to First Two Pages Of Frankenstein helped clarify things.  First Two Pages feels kinda unified in having a big open sound, all the more to fill with heavily orchestrated things, guest vocalists, and so on.  Which can be fine, if many of the songs are good, which they are.  Having that as a unifying element does kind of get in the way of their attempts to bring a little more grit, as "Grease In Your Hair" sounds tame despite trying to be big.  So, not a perfect system.  

Returning to Laugh Track, does the album then stand out as the rockier, more organic counterpart to First Two Pages?  Yes... and no.  Some songs on Laugh Track rock.  Some songs lean into "haunting."  Some quickly end before they can go very long, some are a little ramshackle and jammier.  Some are as heavily orchestrated as anything the National have ever done, like "Weird Goodbyes," unsurprising when it was recorded a year before anything else from either 2023 record was.  Some are lower-fi.  And yeah, it all pretty much sounds like the National, with nothing that's that huge a departure from something they've done in the past.

So I guess the unifying vibe of Laugh Track is "a loose hodgepodge of what this band does."  I'm absolutely on board with that in theory because I don't want my heavily orchestrated indie-rock to sound too samey.  Within the range of National songs, give me some variety.  The more signs that human beings made something, the better.  I like the approach of something like "Alphabet City" more than the heavily stylized minimalism - even when your song is small, you have to be big about it! - of "Once Upon A Poolside," despite the fact that as far as final products, OUAP is a better song than AC.  Now, if you provide an approach I like while providing a consistent level of quality, such that I can't think of a song that I'd dislike listening to - no "New Order T-Shirt"s here, thankfully - we're in business.

As dissected in numerous previous posts, the National are good at a few particular tricks that work on me.  The two examples I'd like to highlight here to generally sum up the record are the familiar chord and the moment of melancholy.  By "familiar chord" - by which I mean something like the main riff of "Deep End (Paul's In Pieces)."  Aaron (I've guessing) plays those three notes, and I cannot stop wanting to listen to the song to hear that figure over and over, and trying to figure out what it sounds similar to.  Because I know I've heard that basic sound before.  It includes bits of other bands (U2, as mentioned) yet everything together could only be the National.  I think "Deep End" sounds like some other National song, somewhere but I can't even say for sure.  "Deep End" sounds like it's always been there.  And by "moment of melancholy" I mean Matt's way of just dropping a plainspoken lyric with a simple minor chord that makes one feel things.  "Coat On A Hook" isn't my favorite song, but the delivery on "friendships are melting, nothing is helping" hits hard.  "Space Invader" is one of my favorite songs here, things to the lyrical delivery on the "what if I['d/we'd" sequence - regret at the former presence of possibilities eloquently expressed as "what if we'd never met?"  Nearly every song on Laugh Track has somewhere between a a few seconds and a few minutes that'd be the perfect accompaniment for sitting in a corner crying.

And then Laugh Track saves its most exciting track for its finale, like an offbeat coda.  Can I mention one last time that I wish there were more "Smoke Detector"s in the repertoire?  See, they can write a searing rocker that highlights their particular quirks as a band.  See, they can make the instrumental parts the most exciting thing about the music.  See, Matt can write lyrics that mostly make sense on a literal level but are poetic and nod at other meanings that one can argue about,* and he can imbue them with fire without changing his characteristic vocal style.  "Smoke Detector" is far and away the best song the National have produced in at least three records' worth of music  They can totally do these things I want for them, yet insist on only doing it sometimes.

And that's kind of my epitaph for this whole series.  At their best, the National find ways to give me something that frustrates while managing to haunt and/or captivate.  They're a good band and I guess I have to declare myself a fan.**  Anyway, the National are a great band when they're on their game.  Laugh Track has enough life to it that I'd classify it as an example of the band being on their game.

Other comments:

If anyone is wondering which of the songs with a simple melancholy hook grew on me big time on later listens - because there's always one, on every damn National record - it's "Tour Manager."

Speaking of people who are great at their craft in a frustrating way, one of the music writers that I find most simultaneously aspirational and challenging, Steven Hyden***, cited the National's "Frankenstein Laughs" as one of his favorite records of 2023 - I forget if it made the main list of a sub-list - and said he couldn't rank it higher only because "Frankenstein Laughs" is of course not an actual record, it's Steven's custom playlist of what he thinks are "the good ones" from First Two Pages and Laugh Track.  When an artist puts out a double-length album it's sort of an impulse even more natural than it is silly to immediately try to turn it into an all killer no filler single album.  Well, for all that I viewed them as different projects, it's all a bunch of music in a short period of time from the same band.  I had to do it.  I thus present "First Two Pages Of Laughter," an attempt to make a single record that's all highlights:

1)  Once Upon A Poolside

2)  Eucalyptus

3)  Deep End

4)  Weird Goodbyes

5)  Dreaming

6)  Tropic Morning News

7)  The Alcott

8)  Send For Me

9)  Laugh Track

10)  Space Invader

11)  Coat On A Hook

12)  Tour Manager

13)  Your Mind Is Not Your Friend

14)  Smoke Detector

Favorite track:  "Smoke Detector"

Runner up:  "Space Invader"

Least favorite track:  "Turn Off The House"

Rating:  4/5

Definitive list of records by the National in order of what I have decided is unambiguously their quality
1)  Sleep Well Beast

2)  Boxer

3)  Laugh Track

4)  Trouble Will Find Me

5)  High Violet

6)  Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers

7)  First Two Pages Of Frankenstein

8)  Alligator

9)  I Am Easy To Find

10)  The National

11)  Cherry Tree

Thoughts on the National, The Live Band, assuming I have any, after listening to Rome (and maybe other live ephemera, we'll see), whenever I get around to it!

*The accepted meaning is that it reflects a challenging period from Matt's life during the lockdown year.  I'm convinced that there's also a bit of very specifically 2023 American politics weaved in, and you cannot persuade me otherwise.

**Even if it's in that guarded way I get when someone's not an absolute favorite artist.  What do you say when you rank basically every single record either a 3.5/5 or a 4/5?

***He's got such interesting things to say and such a way with words.  Yet he's emblematic of a generation that liked rock music that rocked, with an edge, and then "graduated" to indie-slop that doesn't.  He's steered me to some great stuff and to some stuff I find totally baffling.  (Dude, that was your "no-brainer No. 1 album of 2024?"  Seriously?)