The National @ Edinburgh Castle, 11 Jul

From the edge of the stadium, you can see members of The National milling about before they take to the stage, the warm rose of Edinburgh Castle’s stones cascading behind them. “This isn’t what I thought a castle would look like,” lead singer Matt Berninger jokes on stage, gesturing at the thousands of blue plastic seats in front of him, but the clash of ancient and modern makes enormous sense for a band that have long been in the business of smuggling the most old-fashioned kind of bruised romanticism into a distinctly urban modernity.

This evening’s concert, as befits its paradoxical setting, articulates many of the tensions that lie at the heart of The National’s decades-long career. There’s the heady mix of big, big feelings meeting a defeated contemporary existentialism: First Two Pages of Frankenstein’s Eucalyptus, with its plaintive rhetorical refrains, is the second song of the show and breaks us right into the kind of granular heartbreak in which The National trade.

Yet the show is also peppered with a distinctly political ideology, with cries for free abortion and a Gaza ceasefire, and Sea of Love’s 'I see you rushing down', dedicated to Joe Biden with an ironic hope. And then there’s the subversive masculinity that is at play, that finds expression in the discrepancy between the band’s brand (every crew member has a Sad Dads merch hoodie on, reflecting the majority of the crowd’s demographic), and their loose-limbed, anarchic David Byrne-like performance stylings. Berninger keeps leaning over the stage and into the crowd like an indie boy Jack Skellington, miming every word he sings like David Armand’s infamous dance to Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn, consciously playing with the band’s reputation as sad and serious men.

It's a tongue-in-cheek edge that speaks to a band who refuse to sit on their ageing laurels, that are determined to engage with their own music in a slant and complex way. While this might sound frustratingly cerebral, the effects are pure, delightful chaos. “We keep telling our funniest stories before our saddest songs,” Bryce Dessner laments, as Berninger tells a meandering story about the film The Taste of Things, a ringing telephone and a smoke alarm right before a guttural performance of Smoke Detector. During the tender heartache of Alien, meanwhile, someone in the crowd throws an alien plushie on stage, which Berninger proceeds to tear apart with his teeth. It's part of a reciprocal exchange: the crowd hand him signs which he lovingly places on stage, and by the end of the set it seems he’s given away half the equipment on set to the crowd (including a mic stand and a jacket, interrupting himself halfway through Mr. November to insist a fan give it to the woman for whom it was intended).

All of this culminates in a dizzying performance of Terrible Love during the encore, where Berninger dives into the adoring crowd, perceptible only as a focal point around which hands and bodies cluster. There’s a benevolent cult-like energy about it all that feels beautiful rather than frightening, articulating The National’s determination to connect, whatever the cost – lyrics sung directly at members of the crowd, paraphernalia passed back and forth. And as the show ends with an acoustic performance of Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks you remember, amidst all the interpretative dancing and anarchy around props, that these are love songs. There is something a bit goofy and lame about feeling everything so deeply, about being prepared to ruin yourself over love. No one knows that, or can sing it, better than The National.