Music
29 Nov 13

The National live at The O2

It’s the proverbial double-edged sword. You want bands you love to do well, but then they make the step up to a ginormodome like the O2 and you wish you could rewind to a time when, if you were in the mood for going down the front and high-fiving the lead singer, you could.

With 14,000 paying customers in tonight, this is The National’s biggest headlining show to date and the word from our backstage mole is that the chaps are worried about filling such a big stage. It’s nice that they’re not taking anything – least of all us – for granted, but the pre-gig collywobbles are unnecessary.
Camcorder footage of them emerging from the dressing-room elicits a huge cheer, which grows even more deafening as via-several flights of stairs and an interminably long corridor, the biggest cult band in the world hit the stage and immediately calm their nerves with the swoonsome triple whammy of ‘Don’t Swallow The Cap’, ‘I Should Live In Salt’ and Alligator nugget ‘Secret’.
While little has changed musically since they played to 30 people in The Cobblestone – that includes bar staff and the doorman – The Brooklyn-based quintet are now in the position to deploy three skyscraper screens, which get a cheer of their own when they switch into hyperactive red firework mode for ‘Bloodbuzz Ohio’.
What works on the rockier numbers – ‘Squalor Victoria’ also comes with some seriously retina-pleasing visuals – jars though with the gentler likes of ‘Sea Of Life’, ‘I Need My Girl’ and ‘Slow Show’, which don’t need the 180º visual bombast going on around them. No amount of pixilated pyrotechnics can match the theatre of watching Matt Berninger, eyes half-closed and gently rocking from side to side, immersing himself in the musical melancholia provided by his bandmates.
There’s a touching moment before launching into Boxer’s ‘Apartment Story’, when the singer walks to the front of the stage, surveys the crowd and remarks, “This is amazing… we were quite happy at Whelan’s, also.”
Fame may finally have found The National, but monster, fuck off video screens aside, it hasn’t changed them.
We’re a couple of bars into ‘England’ when something – probably his customary pre-gig bottle of wine – kicks in and Matt starts doing that slightly worrying banging himself on the head with the mic thing. Unlike a few years ago at Electric Picnic he doesn’t draw blood, but you do fear for his cranial wellbeing. Mr. B then proceeds to spend three-quarters of the encore in the crowd, with the traditional mass singalong of ‘Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks’ bringing the metaphorical curtain down on another very special show by a very special band.