Wallowing with the National's First Two Pages of Frankenstein

by editor Michele Catalano

I discovered the National about twelve years ago, when a friend shared “All the Wine” with me. The song attached itself to me immediately. So I listened to the rest of Alligator, and then I listened to it again. I moved on to Boxer, then went back to the beginning of the band’s catalog. I had found my new obsession.

It wasn’t just the pervasive sadness that attracted me to the National’s music. I had been listening to a lot of emo; emotions-on-your-sleeve music was appealing to me. But what I was hearing on these albums contained so much more than surface level sadness. There was something deeper, more profound, in the lyrics, in the music. Woven throughout the threads of sadness in their music was anger, remorse, confusion; a tapestry of feelings that felt thick and heavy, a weighted blanket providing comfort and safety.

All these years later, I still feel that comfort within the despair, that sense that even though things are sad, there’s a familiarity in these tears, and I am going to console myself by wallowing. It’s something I am very good at, and the National provides the perfect soundtrack to a good wallow.

I always feel this sense of dread mixed with anticipation when a favorite band puts out a new record. Will it be good? Will it be as great as their last or their first? Will I love it? I felt that sense in April 2023, when we got a new National album. I pre-ordered First Two Pages of Frankenstein when it was announced. I listened to the singles they released before the album, but half-heartedly, because I like to listen to new albums at once, with the context of the track listing to guide me.

The album came out on Friday, April 28, but I was in the hospital without my airpods. I needed to listen to it fully, putting my whole self into it; I couldn’t do that in a hospital bed, wrapped up in tubes and wires. So I waited. When I came home that Sunday, the album was there, waiting for me. I held it. I admired it. I sighed. 

At first, I did not listen to it on vinyl. I needed to listen on streaming, so I could stop after each song and gather my thoughts and cry if I needed to. And lord, did I need to. Let me tell you, if you’ve been through a divorce, some of these lyrics will knife you in the heart. Having recently gone through that trauma, my first listen of the album featured gasping, clutching my heart, tears welling in my eyes. They got me. They got me again.

Emotional trauma is something you never get over. It lingers in your heart, in your soul, in your brain. It informs your every move. It reshapes and remolds your personality. It weighs on you in a way that feels as if it will never let up. Holding all that inside you is never good for you. I often preach about living your feelings, letting your tears and anguish go. But I’m not always good at that. I had been keeping a lot in. I’d been having a hard time crying. I had this fear that I was turning stoic, that I was becoming one of those people who bottle everything up and put on a brave face.

And then along comes the National with this album, and I found myself weeping, sobbing, letting my pain out, reveling in my emotions, nodding at certain lines. Songs about letting go, giving up, splitting up. “You should take it, I’m only gonna break it”— such a simple line—reminded me of putting stuff in a bag for him, begging him to take the stuff that would only remind me of us if I kept it around. And then there’s Phoebe Bridgers, singing with Matt Berninger, their voices blending sweetly and perfectly. “This isn’t helping, I know you think it’s kindness but it’s not”; I am sobbing at the same time my heart is filling with…something. Remorse? Regret? Ah, here’s the sadness, here’s the loneliness, here’s the wallowing I’m so good at.

I listened to First Two Pages of Frankenstein twelve times in the space of a day. I am listening to it now. I listen on vinyl, and the sound of these incredible songs filling my living room with their sorrow is sometimes too much to bear. I listen on streaming, and I stop after certain songs to gather myself, to gain some composure. Then I’m lost in the music again, lost in the words, lost in the world this band has created for me; a world in which I’m able to let go, to purge myself of all that despair and loss and ugliness.

It takes the National to break me in the way I needed to be broken. I am a piñata, filled with stale emotions that are rotting away inside me, eating me up. This record takes a swing at me, and I let loose a torrent of feelings. I am spilling over. I am free.

[Previously on the National]

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