The National, review: 'An urgent, unrelentingly entertaining live experience'

Matt Berninger and Aaron Dessner of The National (Picture: Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images)

The National, Castle Esplanade, Edinburgh ****

Whatever the changing fortunes of their recorded output – and there are those who believe that the recent First Two Pages of Frankenstein and its sister record Laugh Track don’t count among the Ohio-based band’s most immediate works – the National remain an urgent, unrelentingly entertaining live experience.

Under clear skies at Edinburgh Castle, this was only accentuated by the drama of the occasion. Yet even as some of their most beloved songs – Bloodbuzz Ohio, The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness – rolled out over the crowd, singer and dapper black-suited, silver-haired, middle-aged heartthrob Matt Berninger played things less like a serious rock show and more like a Saturday Night Live sketch with a really good soundtrack.

He went on amusingly rambling anecdotes, talking about his dreams and hotel security’s attempts to rouse him from a good film he was watching as the fire alarm went off, castigating his bandmates (who include regular Taylor Swift songwriter Aaron Dessner and his brother Bryce, both guitarists) when they attempted to stop them.

It was a grand joke, and everyone was in on it, crowd and all. During Conversation 16 Berninger singled out a guy in the front row and attempted to eat his brains, while the yellow cuddly toy thrown onstage during Alien was literally, melodramatically chewed up and spat out by the singer. All this silliness was very funny, a contrast to the band’s darkly humorous, tightly-wound emotional epics.

I Need My Girl, Smoke Detector and the nakedly political Fake Empire played out like smartphone-era Springsteen, with Berninger noting the UK and French election results before that last song: “Fascism is going down – free abortion for everyone everywhere, happy Pride month every month!” He does silly, and he does serious at least as well.

Light Years was dedicated to the father of the band’s Edinburgh-born photographer and friend Graham Macindoe, and Mr November to the late Scott Hutchison of Frightened Rabbit. When curfew cut the sound at half past ten sharp, the closing Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks was performed by band and audience together, entirely unamplified. Playing the fool goes a long way, but it takes real heart to spur such a reaction.