The National Josh Goleman
The National is getting ready to launch their 9th workshop cd, First Two Pages of Frankenstein on April 28, and also the band’s Bryce Dessner took a seat with Hanuman Welch for ALT CTRL Radio on Apple Music 1 today to go over the task.
Most significantly, Taylor Swift is included on The National‘s “The Alcott,” which will certainly be consisted of on the honest cd. The National formerly dealt with Swift on Evermore‘s “Coney Island,” and Bryce’ s bro Aaron Dessner often teams up with the 11-time Grammy champion. “We’re all big fans of Taylor, and she’s been really generous with us, inviting us to be part of ‘Coney Island,’” Bryce shared. “And obviously my brother’s worked with her a lot, and I’ve done a bunch of orchestration for her albums.”
He proceeded, “‘The Alcott’ is a song that she co-wrote with Matt [Berninger], where she co-wrote the lyrics. It’s really amazing to hear her, the way she was able to take what Matt had done and then reinvent the song, and it’s really a special song.”
As for the motivation behind The National’s literary cd title, Bryce described that Berninger generated the name, after the frontman underwent a time out in imagination. “I think he was just blocked about what he wanted to sing about, lyrics weren’t coming,” he shared. “And typically in the past, he’ll pick up favorite books, and so apparently he picked up Frankenstein, the [Mary] Shelley book — people know the film and some people don’t realize it’s based on a book — and that helped him get out of his, somehow opened a door for him. I’m not sure why, maybe thinking about monsters or something. But, it helped open the flood gates and in the later stages of the album, he started writing really quickly.”
Listen fully meeting on-demand on Apple Music here.
