When your day job is crewing the rhythm section for the world’s biggest alternative rock band, you want to make the most of your time off. In the case of The National’s Scott and Bryan Devendorf “time off” means LZNDRF, their krautrock-inflected collaboration with Beirut guitarist Ben Lanz.

“These were ideas we couldn’t normally do,” says Scott, from his home in Brooklyn. “We were creating off the cuff and had the freedom to filter all sorts of concepts. The music was the result of us inventing things on the fly.”

Interestingly, this is the precise opposite of the method by which The National craft their stately, gilded songs. Where that group will spend weeks, often months, on a single composition, LZNDRF’s eponymous album was put together over a crazy weekend at a converted church in the Devendorfs’ home town of Cincinnati Ohio.

“With The National we will send sketches to each other, really labour over it,” says the amiable bassist. “Here everything was written as improv and later we revisited and edited it down. You’re going from writing with a lot of structure to no structure at all – and then trimming it after the fact.”

In addition to offering an opportunity to work in a less regimented environment, LZNDRF allowed the siblings reconnect with their younger selves. Driving to gigs in a beat-up tour bus, hanging by the merch stall, giving phone interviews to random journos – this is EXACTLY how it felt to be in The National circa 2005.

“It expands your horizons, doing something like this,” says Scott. “We look at The National as a collective effort. A project like LZNDRF lets you be creative on your own. It broadens your frame of reference. Whether or not you go back and apply that to The National, it is healthy.

“ He is curiously nostalgic for the early days of The National, when the future arena stars juggled their tentative music careers with life as freelance creatives in New York. Circa break-out records Alligator and Boxer, Scott worked as a graphic designer for a Manhattan start up – a gig to which National singer Matt Berninger had quasi-recruited him.

Yet far from looking back on that period of his life as a time of toil, his memories are entirely positive. “It’s hard to avoid nostalgia. I love those MAJOR LZRs With The National off the road, Scott and Bryan Devendorf are indulging their krautrock passion with their new LZNDRF project.
small shows, the sense of camaraderie that you get in a small group. And I still do some freelance [graphic design] projects here and there. Nothing like what I used to. I like to keep my hand in. It’s always good to have stuff to do outside of the band.

“ Indeed that was part of the appeal of LZNDRF. Each new National record is a major event. With a side-project nobody really cares. There is freedom to be creative – even get things wrong. The world is assuredly not standing in judgement. “It’s fun to do something without any purpose other than just doing it,” says Scott. “All of our products have expectations. This doesn’t .That’s why it was such a blast.”

“LZNDRF” incidentally is a vowel-free portmanteau of Lanz and Devendorf. “We originally wanted to call the project Lazendorf,” reveals Scott. “That’s actually a real life surname. It was pretty hard to Google. You were just getting all these random people. So we changed it to Lzndrf. Now, people can search for it online - but nobody know how to pronounce it!”

In a few days LZNDRF set off on a brief European tour. Boo-hiss, there won’t be an Irish stop off (in fact, most of the gigs seem to be in Berlin and environs). However National fans will have a chance to reconnect when the quintet regroup to headline The Longitude festival in Dublin over the summer.

“Every show we play in Ireland has always been special,” says Scott. “The people have supported the band from the start. Even doing super-small venues such as Whelan’s, it has always been fantastic.”

The album LZNDRF is out now.