First Two Pages of Frankenstein: A Review
Imbued with melancholic nostalgia and dissociative lyrics, First Two Pages of Frankenstein is The National‘s latest album, following I Am Easy to Find in 2019. Timeless yet immediate, and filled with a sense of uneasy disturbance, the album is packed with loss and longing, and includes features to satisfy any sad hour playlist: Sufjan Stevens, Phoebe Bridgers and Taylor Swift.
The phantasmal voice of Stevens lingers in the first track, creating a sense of gorgeous fluidity as the singers plead ‘What was the worried thing you said to me?/ I thought we could make it through anything.’ Confusion, desperation and heartbreak run through this first song and it is clear that what will follow is not going to satisfy any desire for closure. The album proceeds to offer insights into different phases of a couple‘s struggle, with track two, ‘Eucalyptus‘, divvying out the belongings of a broken pair, with frontman Matt Berninger, pleading ‘You should take it, cause I‘m not gonna take it’, saying ‘It wouldn‘t be fair/It’d be so alone/Without you there’. The difficulty of trying to split up a shared life offers a profoundly practical sadness and such gloomy disorientation continues throughout.
The album is packed with memory. Most tracks reflect on stories from times gone by and offer flashes of memories from before the dreaded ~now~. Track three ‘New Order T-Shirt’, provides a sense of sepia-toned longing and loss, with lyrics revealing ‘I keep what I can of you/ Split-second glimpses and snapshots and sounds’. However, even these memories are tainted, as Berninger evokes a clandestine protection of times gone by, as he sings ‘I flicker through/ I carry them with me like drugs in a pocket’. There is a sense of self-destruction and secrecy that is never really satisfied and we are left with a slow, moody atmosphere that only continues in the following songs.
True to style, The National offer a mix of subdued tracks among pattering percussion and guitar riffs. Across previous albums, the band have gradually become more and more delicate and this album is certainly the gentlest to be released so far. We witness a slow steadiness throughout the album with most tracks being much less rock inspired than previous works. Track five, ‘Tropic Morning News’, and track eight ‘Grease In Your Hair’ are more reminiscent of earlier releases, with thumping drums and a more full bodied tone. However, generally, the album is understated in this regard.
Having released four singles in the lead up to the album, anticipation was certainly building, with the last single, ‘Your Mind Is Not Your Friend’ featuring Phoebe Bridgers and teasing what was to come (Bridgers also adds vocals to track four ‘This Isn’t Helping’ and again offers a brilliant, balanced and spine-tingling layer to the song). The track ‘Your Mind Is Not Your Friend’ certainly has a Bridgerian tone, contemplating the trustworthiness of the brain and its ability for self-deception, with lyrics beginning ‘Your imagination/ Is in an awful place/Don‘t believe in manifestation/ Your heart’ll break’. Bridgers’ haunting additional vocals are perfect for the track and have a more prominent role than those shown by Sujan Stevens. This song also reveals the psychological element present throughout the album as Matt Berninger confronts fluctuating emotions and disturbed mental states. Lyrics across the record demonstrate such turbulence as we are told in track five ‘I was so distracted then/ I didn’t have it straight in my head/[…] I was suffering more than I let on’, alongside lyrics such as ‘Hurry up, we don’t have time/ Avalanches in my mind/ I‘m getting buried in this dream/ It‘s just as soapy as it seems’ in track six, ‘Alien’.
Where features predominantly offer harmonising vocals and background support, Taylor Swift in ‘The Alcott’ takes a more central position as this track is a true duet, acting as a conversation between a couple. The track echoes Swift‘s ‘Coney Island’ (which featured The National) and also evokes a conversation between the two singers. We see a couple struggling, facing a storm of emotional turmoil as the pair sing ‘You tell me your problems/ (Have I become one of your problems?)/ And I tell you the truth/ (Could it be easy this once?)/[…] It‘s the first thing I do/ (Did my love aid and abet you?)/I tell you that I think I‘m fallin’/ Back in love with you’. Such confusion is given little relief but the album begins to pick up as it draws to an end.
The final song ‘Send For Me’ provides a slightly more hopeful tone, as Berninger offers support to the listener if they ever find themself in undesired places, whether that be an airport, a business meeting, a psychiatric ward. Throughout the album, we travel through the journey of an artist in crisis. Berninger‘s personal struggles and the battles faced within relationships are met with careful delicacy and in this final track we are left with a tone of ever so slight optimism, a forwards movement, a feeling of progress. Predominantly, the album is dark and gloomy, addressing the confusion found in our own brains, and clutching for clarity. It is this disorientation that makes for a compelling and moving album, and one that is worth multiple listens.
The National will be performing at the First Direct Arena in Leeds on 23rd September 2023.
