The National @ ATP-Festival (E)

9 December 2012
The National ATP festival curated by The National, Camber Sands, southern England
Attendance: around 3000, sold out

Sunday night 11 pm, after three days of music and more music, a few pints, microwave dishes, a lot of tea with milk, beach walks and karaoke in the Queen Vic the curators of this year's ATP festival were about to start their own show to finish the fantastic weekend in East Sussex with an even more fantastic final gig. All three days the five guys of The National had appeared again and again in all places as listeners to the other bands and guitarist Aaron Dessner had also constantly stepped in as guest musician. You could tell that all of them had had a lot of fun with their whole mise-en-scène. Until then it had always been easily possible to walk almost to the front of the stage a minute before the beginning of a set. This time the front part of stage didn’t empty at all right after the end of the gig of Local Natives. The audience had saved some last energies for the grand finale. People in the first two rows had probably not left the room since late afternoon. Almost on time the band entered the stage as always very calm unagitated and with a little unglamorous preshow music.

At that moment we all had already lost the bet on the opening song. Matt Berninger set down his cup; the contents looked very much like beer, though he is usually known for a nice glass of wine and the fitting bottle with it. Second thing he did, he asked for more light. He quickly had to prepare his text and informed the audience that he intended to read the entire show. Even though he has a very sexy speaking voice, the man must be joking. Of course, he was singing and they started straightaway with new material. It had been almost exactly one year ago that The National had completed their 20-month High Violet tour. A few months ago there were a few posts that they had been in the studio, but a release date of a hopefully worthy follow-up album to High Violet was still a big secret. With professed perfectionists you never know how long it might take. So it was wonderful to have the ATP to kill some waiting time with The National giving us a short view behind the curtain on some of their raw versions that will get polished and refined in the near future and you can’t even be sure that they will even make it on the album. It didn’t take more than the second song, "Mistaken For Strangers" from the Boxer album to realize that we were surrounded by native speakers and The National diehard fans. The room began to vibrate. Word perfect and powerful voiced the audience joined in singing every line. Due to the outdated structure of the whole building with everybody jumping and singing I got a little nervous. Unfortunately, at this moment there were a few sound problems (a general problem of Stage One). At "Anyone's Ghost" Matt's voice drowned in the opulent instrumentation. Matt himself also gave another explanation for the obvious weaknesses of the vocals that usually gives you shivers: his "stupid Daughter" had sneaked into his bed 5 days before they came to England. He had her lying next to him and when he yawned, she annoyingly coughed right into his mouth.

They managed to get ahold of the sound problem after a while and fortunately also Matt’s beautiful deep voice didn’t get strained, albeit he had to fight with slight limitations. The excellent audience choir also helped a lot. The vibes were fantastic and more than infectious. The large ATP family celebrated the final party of a triumphant weekend and the band was happy. Happy about an audience that made it really easy for them and happy that they had had the chance to spend so much time with all the other musician friends on a legendary weekend. Some of said friends were also introduced as guest musicians for their set such as Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire, who had played three completely different sets of his own over the three days as well. Owen Pallett joined them playing his mind-blowing violin backing the semi-new "I Need My Girl" and the wonderful "About Today". 

The song selection was very close to a set list of an average performance during the last tour. Considering the fact that most people in the audience must have seen at least one gig of the tour, there was no reason to still promote the High Violet album. So the setlist itself was a bit disappointing. I would have loved to get a few more rarely played pearls from the older albums. But at least we could participate in the absolute premiere of three and a half new songs. The second new song however didn’t work at all with the audience and the band definitely was a little disappointed. Matt made his jokes, claiming that the title of the song that had just flopped was "Buttered Bun". At least twin guitarist Aaron started to grin broadly. The following "New Song No. 3" turned out to be much more successful. Rough and unpolished, with an engaging melodic chorus, the typical The National drums, noisy Dessner guitars and the final power of Boxer songs like "Abel" and "Mr. November ". However, it would be almost suspicious if a song by The National fully worked at first listening. In my experience, the pieces need time to grow on you, every time you listen to a song it gets a little bit better and after a while it will never leave you again. Also, the risk of getting tired of a song can almost be eliminated. Somehow I thought it was pretty interesting that the choir compared to the rest of the songs didn’t work so well when they stroke up with "England" a song that I appreciate a lot. Whether the English resent that the "famous angels" never make it to England? The first encore "I Need My Girl" is incidentally also part of the raw material, but had been tried out live a couple of times before. It was noted that in the final part the drums were nicely edited, which significantly improves the song, but it still did not change the fact that the song is just nice average.

The brilliant conclusion after almost two hours then made the unplugged version of "Vanderlyle Cry Baby" already well-known from the second part of the High Violet tour, in which Matt Berninger (notabene without a mic) took a final bath in the crowd conducting his 3.000-men/women-choir. What a lovely, lovely weekend! Or to say it in Matt Berninger’s words: Thanks a lot! We had a blast!

Setlist The National @ATP-Festival Camber Sands:
1. New:„Lola“
2. Mistaken for Strangers
3. Anyone's Ghost (mit Richard Reed Parry)
4. Secret Meeting
5. Bloodbuzz Ohio
6. Conversation 16
7. Squalor Victoria
8. Slow Show
9. New: „Sullivan“ or Buttered Buns
10. New „Prime“
11. Green Gloves
12. Sorrow
13. Abel
14. England
15. Fake Empire
  Encore:
16. I Need My Girl (with Owen Pallett)
17. Mr. November
18. Terrible Love
19. About Today (with Owen Pallett)
20. Vanderlyle Crybaby Geek (unplugged)