Review Summary: Still under the spell, after all
Get Sunk feels like Matt Berninger stranded between stations. The National frontman’s second solo album is intentionally built upon questions of identity - as the Bandcamp blurb says, it’s “
not overtly autobiographical, but the narrator is processing how he became himself” - but in larger senses, this record threatens to be subsumed by them.
Solo careers by artists in established bands are always a bit fraught - how distinct can they really be when a recognizable voice and songwriting style will always be clearly associated with their more prominent vehicle? Whenever I see John Krasinski starring in yet another action movie, there are uncanny flashes of Jim staring at the camera while pranking Dwight one more time. Likewise, no matter how far Berninger goes from his musical roots, comparison and contrast with his work in one of the most vital indie rock bands of the century so far will follow. With The National’s recent output faltering towards tedium interrupted by brilliant flashes of once-expected success,
Get Sunk doesn’t escape unscathed, with “does he still have it?” feeling like the overriding imperative. Meanwhile, this album also feels like a bit of a shift in Berninger’s lyrical fixations, drawing upon childhood reminiscence far more than usual - something I won’t complain about, given a previous attempt at something similar (“Not in Kansas”) ended up being a rare late-era The National masterpiece. That said, his status as the bard of suburban ennui remains prevalent here, and might be an unshakable reputation at this point. A man can try to change the focus, but remains who he is. Undoubtedly Berninger remains an incredibly gifted songwriter, but at times the lyrical output here feels increasingly self-parodic, and at this point the halcyon days when I first discovered The National via
Alligator and swooned at Berninger’s lyricism, which felt like nothing I’d ever heard before, feel like another lifetime, even if he’s basically competing against his own past work rather than any notable competitors. He’s a known quantity now, and while he still gets substantial emotional mileage out of his style, the results are delicate and less jawdropping than before. All this is to say that
Get Sunk walks a tightrope.
Credit where it’s due - to extend that metaphor, Berninger handles the situation like an acrobat, when he falls it’s generally into the arms of cheerleaders. A half-decade ago, the musician’s first solo LP,
Serpentine Prison, felt like a straightforward attempt at dipping his toes into traditional singer-songwriter fare. While
Get Sunk is much less easy to characterize, given its mishmash of turn-back-the-clock rockers, moody wine-soaked chamber pop weepers, and tepidly experimental tracks (the first two categories of which don’t feel averse to appearing on a The National record of one era or another), but the quality level is impressively high. Let’s break down the album by the aforementioned three subsets of tunes:
First, those rockers - few but proud. Perhaps the album’s most striking cut is “Bonnet of Pins”, a ***ing bundle of energy which, “Smoke Detector” aside, most would’ve thought Berninger had lost the capacity for (at least in studio format) sometime back in the last decade. It’s not especially heavy, but enlivened by a nocturnal, nervous, slightly manic spirit anyone familiar with The National’s earlier epochs can identify with. Meanwhile, opener “Inland Ocean”, too, possesses a kind of vigor which Berninger’s recent works haven’t prepared us for, despite delivering in a less conventional way, gracefully gathering steam over its five minute runtime to achieve a propulsive grandeur.
Then there’s the more laconic/lethargic tracks. These are more of a mixed bag - “Junk”, pleasant yet lightweight, is easily the biggest scapegoat candidate, but “Breaking Into Acting” feels like a gently sardonic Berninger-by-the-numbers effort as well, but there are others, like the infectious Americana-inflected “Little by Little” or the impressive closer “Times of Difficulty”, which manages to be both soothing swayer and anthem, which demonstrate the singer-songwriter’s talents far more convincingly than most similar material on The National records in the last ten years or so.
Finally, the weirder songs - specifically a pair of mid-album tracks, neither especially avant-garde, but at least finding Berninger fiddle with something new-ish. “Nowhere Special” is strong - an engaging musical backdrop overlaying spoken-word murmurings, but “Frozen Oranges” is the real highlight in this category, absolutely gorgeous, with the singer-songwriter at his most reflective, a drifting four minutes of thoughtful sadness.
Categorizing this album into those different faces isn’t a perfect remedy, most notably because I left out two tracks from those paragraphs - “No Love” is a pretty track which feels a little too powerful to fall into the subdued ballad section, while “Silver Jeep” is absolutely pristine and a highlight of the album, and for all its “forty-something in couples therapy” energy, remains a bit too unconventional to sit comfortably in a particular box. Regardless, it’s clear that
Get Sunk represents a tangle of threads - things Berninger has explored before with The National, stuff he hasn’t but would like to, faded memories from decades ago, dreary wisdom gleaned since. If the results don’t feel particularly coherent, the underlying architecture is mostly remarkably strong, and taken as a whole, this is probably the most wholly successful release Berninger’s been involved with since
Trouble Will Find Me. Sure, there are moments here when I wonder if, at long last, the shtick has finally worn out for me - tunes which could’ve littered The National’s increasingly threadbare recent output, beautifully sad yet generic, or lyrics which recall others from somewhere in that well-worn record collection - but there’s always a redemption to be found, at least this time around. The overarching takeaway from
Get Sunk, at least for me, is a reminder that few musicians can write a better sad sack meditation - “
little by little, turn into dust and dreams”. Yeah, I feel that, Matt.
