The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
The National · Matt Berninger, Aaron and Bryce Dessner, Scott and Bryan Devendorf · produced by the band · 4AD · thirteen tracks, about 55 minutes
Mode
Indie rock in the literate baritone line, slowed and warmed: drums as lead instrument, brass and strings as weather, a low voice inside full arrangements
Mythos
Lot’s wife turned to a brother’s guilt, grace and fall, possession, the man who must leave a place or be found there: myth evoked as moral weather, not built
Phase
Thirteen tracks; an opening of guilt and diagnosis, a long middle of attachment and drift, and a close in two slow, plain songs that do not resolve
Presentation
Album; thirteen songs of narrow spread in length, about fifty-five minutes, one disc (two LPs on vinyl), first seven and last six of near-equal length
Register
A low, close baritone, mixed low by habit, lifting into a strained upper register at two climaxes; nearly every track at a walking pulse or slower, three driven songs
Scale
One man’s interior: his depression and his drink, a party, a couple and its dependence, a brother left behind
Governing Proposition
A band at the height of its powers slows its own language, lets go of its old tension and hides its uneven meters inside songs that sound plain, so that the record walks steadily while it keeps stumbling. Its subject is a man in comfortable middle life who lives his depression partly as a performance of itself, knows it, and cannot stop; one attachment keeps the performance from becoming the whole of him.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens by looking back. Its first title summons Lot’s wife, the one who looked back, and the song turns that figure into an address to a brother left behind. Guilt and attachment are its terms, and they are the record’s terms. Before anything has been diagnosed, a man has turned to face someone he left, and the looking back that the title names is what the whole record does: thirteen songs in which a man in comfortable middle life examines himself, and what he has left, without moving on from it.
The band had been making records in this voice for years. Matt Berninger’s baritone is low and close, and it sits low in the mix by habit, inside arrangements by Aaron and Bryce Dessner and over Bryan Devendorf’s drums, which act as a lead instrument. On Boxer and High Violet that voice had been set against pressure. Here the pressure is let go. Nearly every track sits at a walking pulse or slower; only Don’t Swallow the Cap, Sea of Love and Graceless are driven. The songs are of like size, none much under three minutes and none much above five, and the record runs about fifty-five minutes in thirteen of them.
The ease is deceptive. Several of the songs move in uneven or changing meters, and the drums keep the ear in a steady walk over them, so that the stumble is felt and seldom noticed. That is the record’s best formal idea, and it is a portrait of its speaker: a man who keeps up appearances while slipping would sound like this, plain on the surface and a beat early or late beneath it. The voice inside the full arrangements is a figure half drowned in his own surroundings. The record knows this about itself, and the knowledge is in the sound before it is in the words.
Movement II
Demons states the condition, and states it plainly. The speaker stays “down with my demons”, a condition named without drama and without any promise of rising out of it. The song walks at an even pace over its drums, the voice level and low, and nothing in it breaks. That is the record’s method in one song: a calm surface, an admission made in a conversational tone, and a disturbance under both that is never allowed to show as disturbance. The title borrows possession, one of several old figures the record calls on, and leaves it as a figure of speech for a mood that has settled in.
Don’t Swallow the Cap gives the condition its fullest form. It is one of the three driven songs, and it compresses the record’s argument into a phrase: there are “only two emotions”, and the song makes them fear and devotion. Fear and devotion are the record’s two poles, and the devotion is the only thing standing between the speaker and the performance of his unhappiness. The cap of its title is one of the record’s particulars, like the party, the girl and the brother, things that sound like non sequiturs on first hearing and gather meaning as the condition comes into focus.
What the record discloses can be put in a sentence, and the sentence holds: a man in comfortable middle life lives his depression partly as a performance of itself, knows that he does, and cannot stop; his dependence on one person is the only thing that keeps the performance from becoming the whole of him. That is a meaning and not only a mood. Its limit is its reach. The condition stays inside one man, one couple and one class, and the ground under it, the money and the comfort that let the melancholy be performed at all, is never brought into view.
Movement III
Sea of Love is the one place the surface cracks. It takes its title from an old song and its threat from one of the oldest patterns there is, the man who must leave a place or be found there by what follows him. For most of its length it drives forward like the other two quick songs. Then, in its last minute, the voice that has held its level breaks upward into a higher, strained register over a hammering drum, and for a moment the composure the whole record maintains is gone. It is the record’s one true eruption, and it is placed so that it costs as much as it can.
The rest of the record keeps the surface whole, and the contrast is the point. The law that governs it is a low, steady surface over an unsteady interior, in sound and in words alike: oblique lines over songs that seem plain, both concealing their irregularity. Sea of Love and the quiet close are the two most distant elements, and they obey the same law, as two outcomes of one condition. In the one the surface gives way; in the other it holds over what it hides. Graceless has the second of the voice’s two breaks upward, and it confirms the rule rather than extending it.
The coherence is real and the range is moderate. Tempo, register and palette lie close together across the thirteen songs, and the law is seldom tested at any great distance. The making serves it closely. Brass and strings enter as weather rather than decoration, the mixes are uncluttered for their density, and the recording is warm and clean. But the palette is narrow and the tempos cluster, and the making that is load-bearing in the drums, in Sea of Love and in two or three arrangements becomes, through the middle of the record, excellent service of a narrow language.
Movement IV
The middle of the record is a long stretch of attachment and drift. I Need My Girl gives the dependence without irony. A single repeated guitar figure carries the whole song, under a voice that never raises itself, and the song rises by that restraint into one of the record’s heights. This Is the Last Time builds a long swell in the same register. Between and around them sit Heavenfaced and Slipped, slow and beautiful, which say again what these two say better, and Fireproof, slight and lovely and the shortest song on the record. From the sixth track to the tenth the songs are permitted rather than compelled, and one of them could go without loss.
Humiliation, the longest track, builds its swell on a motorik pulse that holds and holds, and it and the long codas take a little from krautrock. That is part of the record’s turn, and the turn is small. The inheritance is the band’s own, proven on the two records before it: the baritone, the literate and oblique lyric, the drums in front, the brass and string colour of the arrangements. The record relaxes that language. It slows, lets go of the tension of the earlier records and hides its uneven meters, and it is warmer and more songful than anything the band had made before.
But the stake was low. A band at its commercial height made a record in its established language, more confident and more open, and its departure is one the listener is not meant to notice. In its field, the guitar-led indie and alternative rock of the early 2010s, it showed that the band’s manner could carry warmth and ease without losing its gravity, was nominated for a Grammy, and confirmed the band as the leading act of its kind. The style it consolidated was widely heard afterward, but that influence belongs to the band’s whole body of work, and no later record can be shown to turn on this one.
Movement V
Pink Rabbits is the record’s centre and its height. A piano-led ballad in a sway, it lifts on its last choruses into a desolate grandeur, and it gives the record’s self-knowledge its sharpest form. The speaker sees himself as “a television version” of a broken-hearted man: the sadness is real, and it is watched as it is felt, played as a part by the one who suffers it. That double vision is the record’s own finding. The man knows he is performing his unhappiness and cannot stop performing it, and the song is at its most beautiful exactly where that knowledge is clearest.
Hard to Find closes the record in a slow, plain song that barely rises and resolves nothing. The speaker at its end is where he was in Demons, and no passage, return or ordeal has carried him from one to the other. The record’s myths, Lot’s wife, grace and fall, possession, the man pursued, stay allusions laid on particulars, and its world is the scale of an interior: a consciousness, a couple, a brother, the setting of a city and its comfort, with labour, the state, history and the natural order absent. Within that scale the record is complete, and the close holds over what it hides.
Thirteen years on, the record survives whole, in print and with nothing lost, its warm and acoustic sound bound to no production fashion. The words repay return and the arrangements repay close listening, but its meaning on the tenth hearing is close to its meaning on the third: it deepens as a portrait, not as an argument. It stands below the band’s Boxer at 8.2 and High Violet at 7.8, which made and enlarged the language this record refines. What it adds is ease and a self-watching candour, held in a form that walks steadily while it stumbles. It is a serious, finely made record whose middle is soft and whose stake was small.
Act III · The Twelve
Thirteen tracks in fifty-five minutes, and the subtractive test bites more than once. I Should Live in Salt must open: an address to a brother left behind, it sets the record’s terms of guilt and attachment. Demons states the condition, Don’t Swallow the Cap gives it its fullest form, Pink Rabbits is the record’s centre and Hard to Find a fit, quiet close. But the middle is soft. Heavenfaced and Slipped are slow and beautiful and say again what This Is the Last Time and I Need My Girl say better; one of them could go without loss, and Fireproof, slight and lovely, is near the line. From the sixth track to the tenth the record is permitted rather than compelled.
Score: 7.4 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and it holds: a man in comfortable middle life lives his depression partly as a performance of itself, knows it, and cannot stop, and his dependence on one person is all that keeps the performance from becoming the whole of him. Demons names the condition plainly, a man “down with my demons”. Pink Rabbits gives the self-knowledge in “a television version” of a broken-hearted man, the sadness watched as it is felt. Don’t Swallow the Cap compresses it into “only two emotions”, fear and devotion. That is a meaning, not a mood. Held back because the condition stays in one class and one sensibility, and the social ground beneath it, money and the comfort that lets the melancholy be performed, is never brought into view.
Score: 7.7 / 10
Elevation comes in the band’s register: warm, grave, slow-gathering, never ecstatic. Pink Rabbits is the height, a piano-led ballad in a sway that lifts on its last choruses into a desolate grandeur. I Need My Girl rises by restraint, a repeated guitar figure under a voice that never raises itself. Sea of Love holds the record’s one true eruption, the voice breaking upward over a hammering drum in its last minute. This Is the Last Time and Humiliation each build a long swell, the second on a motorik pulse that holds and holds. Five or six heights in thirteen tracks is good frequency. What holds the figure is altitude: the heights are tender or bruised more than overwhelming, and none reaches the terror or transport of Warszawa on Low.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Myth is evoked often and built nowhere. The opening title summons Lot’s wife, the one who looked back, and turns her into a brother’s guilt. Heavenfaced and Graceless borrow the language of grace and fall; Demons borrows possession. Sea of Love takes its title from an old song and its threat from one of the oldest patterns, the man who must leave a place or be found there by what follows him. These give the record a moral weather. But no archetype carries its structure. There is no passage, return or ordeal through which the sequence moves: the speaker at the end of Hard to Find is where he was in Demons. The cap, the party, the girl and the brother stay particulars, and the myths stay laid on them.
Score: 6.8 / 10
The inheritance is the band’s own: the baritone, the literate and oblique lyric, the drums as lead instrument, the brass and string colour of the Dessners’ arrangements, all proven on the two records before it. The turn is small and real. The record relaxes: tempos slow, the tension of the earlier records is let go, and uneven meters are hidden inside songs that sound plain. Humiliation and the long codas take a little from krautrock, and the record is warmer and more songful than anything the band had made. But the stake was low. A band at its commercial height made a record in its established language, more confident and less nervous. A wager placed on a proven path is not a swerve; the axis credits the hidden meters and the softened attack, and no more.
Score: 6.8 / 10
Change the form and something real is lost, though not everything. The hidden meters are the record’s best formal idea: songs that feel like a steady walk but keep stumbling a beat early or late, which is how a man who keeps up appearances while slipping would sound. The low-mixed voice inside full arrangements makes the speaker a figure half drowned in his own surroundings, and the record knows it. The sequence has a shape: an opening of guilt and diagnosis, a long middle of attachment and drift, and a close in two slow, plain songs that do not resolve. But the middle is a list more than an arc, and most of its songs could be reordered with little loss. Several tracks are containers for good songs, not forms that think.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Thirteen years supply some evidence. The words repay return: lines that sound like non sequiturs on first hearing, the cap, the pink rabbits, the television version, gather meaning as the record’s condition comes into focus, and listeners have kept parsing them. The arrangements repay close listening: the brass and string lines, the counter-melodies under the voice, the drum patterns that conceal their meter. Formal depth is real at the level of the song. What holds the figure is that the record’s meaning on the tenth hearing is close to its meaning on the third. It deepens as a mood and a portrait, not as an argument that keeps opening, and no sustained critical tradition is shown to have reopened it beyond the normal life of an admired record.
Score: 7.4 / 10
The field is guitar-led indie and alternative rock of the early 2010s. Intrinsic force is modest: the record refines a manner the band had already established and shows that the manner can carry warmth and ease without losing its gravity, but it reorganises no possibility. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: real in presence and thin in redirection. The record was nominated for a Grammy and confirmed the band as the leading act of its kind. The literate, low-voiced, slow-building band song of adult melancholy was widely heard after it, but that influence belongs to the band’s whole body of work and to Boxer and High Violet before it, and Aaron Dessner’s later production is a career’s reach, not this album’s. No named later record can be shown to turn on it.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Survival is weighed over thirteen years, and thirteen years cannot be scored as decades. Form: whole and fully legible; the record exists as released, in print, with nothing lost. Presence: continuous and real, its songs still in steady listening, but the span is short and the record’s presence sits inside the band’s, so presence adds nothing to the usual figure for its age. Surface fixed to a moment: small. The sound is warm and acoustic in timbre, bound to no production fashion, and it charges the record with no date stamp. The figure is the one its span allows, earned whole and without discount, and it will rise or fall only on what the coming decades show.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with the words weighed elsewhere, is high and at moments load-bearing. Bryan Devendorf’s drumming carries the hidden meters so that the stumble is felt and never heard as a trick. The Dessners’ arrangements are exact: brass and strings enter as weather, not decoration, and in I Need My Girl a single repeated guitar figure carries a whole song. Berninger’s baritone is set low and close, and its two breaks upward, in Sea of Love and Graceless, are placed for the greatest cost. The recording is warm and clean, the mixes uncluttered for their density. The costs: the palette is narrow, the tempos cluster, and the middle ballads use the same means to diminishing effect. This is mastery of a chosen language without the inventive command of the top rung, under m b v at 8.5 and well under Low at 9.0.
Score: 8.3 / 10
One law governs the whole: a low, steady surface over an unsteady interior, in sound and in words alike. The two most distant elements are Sea of Love, a driven song that breaks into a shout, and Hard to Find, a quiet song that barely rises. Both obey the law: in Sea of Love the surface finally cracks, in Hard to Find it holds over what it hides, and the record treats them as two outcomes of one condition. The words and the sound agree throughout, oblique lines over plain-seeming songs, both concealing their irregularity. What holds the figure is range: tempo, register and palette lie close together, the law is rarely tested at any great distance, and narrowness is not coherence.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Judged on what the record holds. Consciousness is held fully: depression, self-watching, drink, the social performance of a man at parties. The couple and its dependence are held fully, in I Need My Girl and Pink Rabbits. The family enters through the brother of the opening track, and only there. The sacred enters as idiom, grace, heaven, demons, salt, and is not held as an order. The city and its comfort are present as setting. Labour, the state, history and the natural order are absent. Three orders held and two more present, joined by a single consciousness, and within that scale the record is complete. What holds the figure is the scale itself, which is the scale of one interior.
Score: 6.6 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.4 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 8.3, then The Imperishable at 8.0 and The Inner Law at 7.8. Drumming that carries the hidden meters so the stumble is felt and never heard as a trick, arrangements that enter as weather, and a voice whose two breaks upward are placed for the greatest cost; a record whole and in print after thirteen years, bound to no production fashion; and one law, a low steady surface over an unsteady interior, which Sea of Love cracks and Hard to Find holds.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.6: consciousness and the couple held fully, the family entering through one brother, the sacred an idiom and the city a setting, with labour, the state, history and the natural order absent. Above it, The Archetypal Deep and The Swerve at 6.8: Lot’s wife, grace and possession evoked as moral weather and built into no structure, and a turn that relaxes the band’s proven language without departing from it, a wager placed on a proven path. Then Pressure on Tradition at 7.0, where the reach belongs to the band’s whole body of work rather than to this record.
The Necessity Cap is unmet: The Inevitable at 7.4 falls a tenth short of the threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.4, The Made at 8.3 and The Inner Law at 7.8, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Imperishable at 8.0, The Unconcealment at 7.7, Pressure on Tradition at 7.0, The Archetypal Deep at 6.8 and The Swerve at 6.8 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Archetypal Deep, 6.8, The Swerve, 6.8, Pressure on Tradition, 7.0, The Inevitable, 7.4, The Living Form, 7.4, and The Bottomless Well, 7.4, all below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.6. Two of the five summit conditions are met, the Coherence Floor and the Megethos Floor. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.4, from a sum of 88.8, in the band of Tier III, six tenths short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and short of the 9.0 that the summit requires, and the Necessity Cap would close the summit to it at any aggregate.
Basis · the album as first released by 4AD in May 2013, thirteen tracks in their original order on one disc (two LPs on vinyl), about fifty-five minutes, produced by the band; judged from knowledge of the recording, its lyrics and its reception; no recording or lyric sheet was in hand, and running times are approximate. No deluxe or bonus material is part of the work. The documentary Mistaken for Strangers (2013), made by Tom Berninger, is context only. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted beyond a fragment of four words. Facts that could not be verified, among them the exact dates of release, the studio and recording dates, the mixer, the guest singers and players, the chart positions, the meters of particular songs and the record’s later place in the band’s concerts, are not given.