Matt Berninger on KNEECAP: "I haven’t learned Irish yet so don’t know all the words but Fenian is blowing our minds right now"

Now that Dave Grohl has officially relinquished the title – “If I wanted to be a priest, I’d be a fucking priest,” the Foos commander-in-chief told Hot Press – I think that Nicest Man In Rock status should be bestowed on Matt Berninger who’s turned affability into as big an art form as his music.

The latter was embellished in 2025 by Get Sunk, his brilliant second solo album which was accompanied by two equally killer Vicar St. gigs.

If you’d had your Matt Berninger bingo card with you the first night, you probably wouldn’t have expected to cross off “Walks on to Kneecap’s ‘Better Way To Live’ and shouts ‘Free Mo Chara!’ to wild applause.’”

Asked when the West Belfast trio first came on to his radar, Matt reveals that, “It was quite a while ago courtesy of a photographer called Graham MacIndoe who’s collaborated with The National for the past twenty years and also shot Kneecap. He was the first person to say, ‘You’ve got to check these guys out’ and now they’re a family favourite.

“I haven’t learned Irish yet so don’t know all the words but Fenian is blowing our minds right now. In July, we’re on the same stage as Kneecap at a festival in Poland which they’re headlining, so I’m going to try and hide behind an amp or a curtain somewhere and stay on stage.”

KNEECAP. Credit: Peadar Ó Goill

A few years back Bruce Springsteen asked why it was only old timers like him and Tom Morello who were kicking against the political pricks. Thankfully, some younger voices have now joined in.

“That’s great,” the Ohio-born, Connecticut-residing singer resumes. “Bruce and Tom are still so inspiring but you need people like Kneecap to speak to their own generation. It’s hard to have politics as an integral part of your music, and artists who do that powerfully and eloquently – like the ones we’re talking about – are to be greatly respected. It takes so much courage and so much talent to message that kind of stuff without it feeling preachy.

“The National are a political band too, I would say. It’s not necessarily front and centre in our music, but we’ll play shows for politicians and causes whether it be Partners In Health, Artists For Peace or the Red Hot Organization.”

Having previously championed Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama who adopted The National’s ‘Fake Empire’ as a campaign anthem, are there any younger Democrats that Matt would like to see in the White House?

“The roots in America at the moment are rotten to the core,” he sighs. “I’m a Catholic – not a devout one but I go to church and believe in ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ and ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself.’ I was an altar boy and that stuff stuck with me. They sell themselves as being Christians, but Donald Trump and his administration’s policies are the exact opposite of what that guy Jesus said.

“On the upside, you have people like James Talarico, the Democrat in Texas who’s using his genuine faith to try and connect with people who’ve followed this president down a very dark path but might now be looking for salvation. Pete Buttigieg is another Democrat who’s starting to have the conversations this country needs to have. We need language which cracks through the mental illness that’s happening here.”

I’m not a Catholic of any kind but still think that Pope Leo rocks.

“Yeah, thank god someone has a moral compass,” Matt nods. “I’m not sure if the people who claim to be religious and moral, but are making such immoral choices, are open to logic or reason but you’ve got to try, right?”

The 55-year-old is kicking back for an hour in Los Angeles’ (fnarr, fnarr) Knobworld Studio where after intermingling bouts of depression and writer’s block he recorded Get Sunk.

“I’m here working on some new stuff,” Matt reveals. “The solo band has been touring and writing on the road, so before I return to other things I’m trying to hurry up and get some tracks finished.”

Whilst recorded on the West Coast, Get Sunk was conceived in the Berninger family’s new Connecticut home, parts of which date back to 1760.

“America wasn’t even there in 1760 which means it’s technically an English house,” he tells me. “I don’t know who actually put the timbers together; it could have been slaves. There’s something about living in an old place, though, which makes you feel grounded to something bigger than the disaster of current America.”

Matt’s writer’s block started easing when instead of putting pen to paper, he put pen to baseball.

“I’ve hundreds of notebooks, in which the ideas I had were becoming entombed,” he explains. “I don’t follow the Cincinnati Reds or any other major league team but I tossed baseball with my dad, and now I toss ball with my daughter. I have a net I bounce it off which is a meditative thing. I thought, ‘I love holding a baseball, so why not try writing on one?’

“It’s a rewiring of the process which slows me down and makes me feel less anxious. A baseball sitting on a shelf with writing on it is easier to pick up than a notebook or a laptop.”

The benefits don’t end there.

“If I can’t fit a whole song on a baseball, I know the song’s too long and I have to edit it,” he laughs. “It’s a way of making journaling more tactile and keep me enjoying myself.”

We’ll have to make sure there are a couple of sliotars in his dressing room on July 18 when Matt plays Kilkenny Live At Castle Mills with Lisa O’Neill and Engine Alley.

“I’ve already got a couple. People have been sending me them, cricket balls, all sorts!”

If Mr. B’s music career goes tits up, he can always open a Berninger Sporting Goods Emporium.

As great as Get Sunk and Matt’s solo shows have been, there will be those of you eager to know what – if anything – lies ahead for The National.

“Everybody’s been working, one way or the other, on new National songs for a while,” he reveals. “During the last two years of us touring, if there was a spare fifteen minutes at soundcheck, we’d improvise and try to get something cooking. We collected about thirty-five things, and I’ve been trying to see what I can make out of all of that. Also, we’re bubbling all these little studio ideas. We’re not in the studio but have folders and folders of stuff. When The National will reemerge with a record or shows is pretty blurry. I think we’ll probably do some gigs next year but I don’t know if we’ll have a record. But I have been working on it for a long time!”

That’ll do us for now... In addition to his solo endeavours, Matt has spent 2025/’26 trying to out-collaborate the Dessner brothers.

Copious amounts of Chardonnay was drunk when him and Rosanne Cash covered The Velvet Underground’s ‘Who Loves The Sun’ for the new Hulu series, Sunny Nights.

“I was introduced to Rosanne for the first time about six years ago,” he recalls. “We became pen pals and now in Connecticut I hang out with her a lot. She’s got a place in New York and another not far from where I live. She’s just the best.”

There was another great meeting of musical minds earlier this year when Matt guested on Anna Calvi’s ‘Is This All There Is?’

“Anna’s so cool,” he enthuses. “Her and The National were both performing at this festival somewhere and got to hang out. Then I was honoured when she asked me to do that song with her.

“It happened very organically, like The National’s collaboration with Taylor Swift did. We’d met her a few times, she was a fan of ours and vice versa and the natural progression was doing something together.”

To celebrate last year’s release of the Deliver Me From Nowhere biopic, Matt spent a day in New York’s fabled Power Station studio with Lucy Dacus and Walter Martin from The Walkmen. As well as penning a couple of new tunes, the hastily formed trio covered some of their favourite Springsteen classics including ‘Dancing In The Dark’.

“They shot a lot of that movie in the Power Station which is where Born In The USA was made,” he resumes. “I’ve known Lucy and Walter for a long time so when somebody suggested that we hook up it was a no-brainer. We recorded on the same sort of eight-track Bruce used for Nebraska, which is one of those Rosetta Stones for what we call indie rock. Meaning ‘I can do this by myself at home and the sonics don’t have to be studio perfect.’ A lot of punk was made that way and in the film you see Bruce listening to Suicide who were as DIY as they come. For such a mainstream artist to choose to make a record that way tore down the walls and proved that you can make a masterpiece in your bedroom.”

Credit: Chantal Anderson

Rewinding to the Velvet Underground, what was the hippest group Matt saw growing up in Cincinnati?

“The first one I remember seeing and thinking, ‘Oh my god, I want to do that!’ was Thompson Twins,” he reveals. “My sister had been playing it at home and suddenly there they were on stage. A few years later in the same venue I saw Iggy Pop. We had our own local bands like Afghan Whigs and Blizzard 99 who were both pretty cool. Nirvana played a little college bar gig in Cincinnati which  unfortunately I missed so, yeah, blame Thompson Twins for what happened next!”

How cool on a scale of 1 to 10 was Booker T. Jones guesting on Get Sunk?

“Eleven, he’s off the charts cool,” Matt marvels. “He has a personality that’s genuinely saturated with kindness, wisdom and pure love for beautiful sounds. Booker T. was always talking to me about my lyrics. He’d put his hand on my back, say: ‘I really like this’ and we’d get emotional together. Not even my wife had done that to me before!”

Before he puts nose to the studio grindstone again, is he looking forward to his Kilkenny day out?

“Very much so,” Matt shoots back. “The National have never made it there but people keep telling me what a cool city and venue it is. Lisa O’Neill is a master storyteller and Engine Alley are local heroes, so I’ll be in good company.”

• Get Sunk is out now on Book Records. Matt Berninger plays Kilkenny Live At Castle Mills on July 18 with Lisa O’Neill and Engine Alley. The night before it’s Public Image Ltd., Ash and Kerbdog. castlemills.ie