Idolator
Judging by the trailer for A Skin, A Night, an upcoming documentary about smoky NYC swoon rockers the National, the band sat around in either incredibly dark or blindingly bright rooms, scratching their eyes, clapping into microphones and drinking for over half a year while recording Boxer. "We're very much in the middle of something...we don't know where we'll end up. Maybe the record will be the film." Don't you have to be British to be this dramatic? Especially if you sound like a more accessible Tindersticks?
What goes on in A Skin, A Night, though, is not the stuff of well-rehearsed insider history. Nor is it a series of rock'n'roll clichés. Nor is it specifically concerned with the making of The National's fourth full-length album, Boxer, even though much of it was filmed during sessions for that record at Peter Katis's Bridgeport, Connecticut studio. A Skin, A Night is less a movie about The National than a movie about how music is made today — not with classic rock bravado, or debauched indulgence, but through novelistic attention to detail, a collective implosion of personality, and worried worried nights.
....A Skin, A Night is a sixty-minute portrait of impressions, mutual affection, and intimate moments you'd never otherwise see. If The National's lyrics seem to take us inside the human condition, Vincent Moon's images take us outside, documenting the beauty of the sounds made by our human skin.
"The beauty of sounds made by our human skin," Christ. I guarantee these guys will be working with Eno and/or Lanois within the next decade. Failing that, Steve Lillywhite.
A Skin, A Night - a film about THE NATIONAL & a new EP [Brooklyn Vegan]
Comments
What's wrong with working with Lanois or Eno? But, man, you called it on the whole accessible Tindersticks thing.
I don't know why you keep taunting Lucas with those Tindersticks comments.
Aren't the National a jokey "look! we can be serious" side project of Crash Test Dummies?
@bg5000: You know how I do.
Can we stop putting microphones in front of musicians?
Unless they're, you know, singing.
Barring Idolator (natch), is Brooklynvegan.com really the most far-reaching media outlet they could score for the press release of this, um, "documentary"?
I don't know if you're making fun of The National for sounding like Tindersticks or not, but either way I'm checking that band out.
Also, I'm psyched about both the EP and the DVD.
Tindersticks > The National.
That is all.
@SuperUnison: I don't want to sound like a crazy person, but Tindersticks were, to my ears, one of the two or three most ambitious British outfits of the last two decades.
That closing scene with Tony Soprano in bed with the shotgun in the next-to-last episode of Sopranos (set to Tindersticks) was ace.
I guarantee these guys will be working with Eno and/or Lanois within the next decade. Failing that, Steve Lillywhite.
Nigel Godrich. Anyone want to take the other side of this bet?
@Lucas Jensen: What's the best place to start?
@Lucas Jensen: hear hear...
@SuperUnison: the first 2 'sticks album are pretty great introductions to their 'thing' (an amalgam of Nancy and Lee, Francis Lai and C86).
the later records incorporated more soul influences, and are as good, but in a different way...
@SuperUnison: @CharlesRockyPamplin: I agree. The first two are just amazing. Huge records...long, epic in scope. The first one is a little more all over the place and the second one more dark and orchestral, but both are masterpieces. Curtains, the third one is unbelievable, too. They were never afraid to wield an orchestra or record different versions of the same songs or do a duet or any of the stuff that others think is too campy. They had serious balls and the production was generally astounding.
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