The National - Mistaken For Strangers

"Every night the car alarms would sound. Kids were running around the neighbourhood setting them off, so you'd hear this cacophony of all these different styles of alarms in the distance and it sounded like geese at one point… that's what it's about on a surface level, and then it grew into being about a lot of different things…" Matt Berninger flippantly reveals the simplistic foundation beneath The Geese of Beverly Road from 2005's acclaimed slow burner, Alligator. It's with this deadpan sincerity that the Brooklyn-based quintet has come to find a deep resonance within their ever-amassing audience.

The Skinny catches Berninger "trailing around Europe..." appearing fatigued, though he volunteers that he isn't without much of a prompt. "No, no, it's fine," he reassures. In terms of the National's present trajectory, things probably couldn't be finer. Berninger still seems to marvel slightly at the place their catalytic breakthrough elevated them to: "When Alligator first came out, it didn't explode at all. It was a long time; slowly friends would give it to each other and pass it around, it slowly got its feet from word of mouth. Toward the end of touring it, we realised suddenly that a lot more people were listening."

With an expectant base of followers transfixed on their next move, anticipation was cut short when their latest LP - gasp - leaked online several weeks in advance of its scheduled release late last month. Of the album's premature surfacing, Berninger appears adamant that time will prove to show its merit. "Well, it's cool. If you make a record that leaks and people are trying to get it and listen before it even comes out, you've got nothing to complain about. It's not good for the label, maybe on a short term basis, but more bands are being heard, so I think it's a great thing. Especially for our records, because they take a little time to get into so if it leaks ahead of time it gives people a little time to understand it by the time comes out," he laughs, almost incredulously, "it will have grown by then."

How big? Their 4th LP, Boxer, has already emerged from the locker room a sizeable pugilist of staggering weight; driven by incisive narratives that carry all the mental frailty and harsh brutality that such a title suggests. "A lot of the characters in the songs are struggling," Berninger confesses. "Either they're trying to hold on, reconnect, or in many cases they're struggling to escape… just people fighting for something in one way or another."

Part autobiographical and aided by the delicate, yet sometimes thunderous textures of the brothers Dessner and Devendorf, Boxer ensures that there's still a strong, distinct and lingering sense of melancholic honesty hovering close by. But how does Berninger prevent the realism in his lyrics from taking on a personally intrusive facet? "There is a level of it that is very personal," he confirms, "but it's a device to talk about someone and not be in first person all the time. It's not just trying to hide beside something, not everything is autobiographical by any means. But I do get emotionally invested in what that the characters are in the middle of. They come from real things. Maybe they're not distinct diary entries but they are things that I'm obsessing over for whatever reason."

The restless raconteur taps into a timeless, well-practiced methodology, one that clearly harnesses elements from many of his heroes. "Tom Waits and Nick Cave, Neil Young, definitely Morrissey is also another... Bob Dylan, there's a way that some of them have, Leonard Cohen does this too... where they can talk about things in a very down to earth and very base, instinctual way. They're talking about sex or they're talking about depression or they're talking about being drunk… they're very honest about some of those things and sometimes it's embarrassing. Those writers have no fear of saying ugly things and embracing it… I definitely learned a lot from them."