On stage, I become a romanticised, superhero version of me, says Matt Berninger as he opens up on solo album release
ANYONE who’s seen Matt Berninger sing live will know that he has a commanding stage presence.
Tall, elegant and blessed with a sumptuous baritone, The National’s frontman looks every inch a rock star.
All 6ft 3in of him.
With his beloved band, he’s made acclaimed records for 25 years, headlined numerous festivals — and sung with Taylor Swift.
And yet, as I discover and he admits, there’s a very different person beneath the veneer.
As he releases his second solo album, the soul-searching Get Sunk, he says: “Sometimes, you must go into the world in character just to survive.
“To go on stage and be Matt Berninger of The National for two-and-a-half hours, you need armour.
“I become a romanticised, superhero version of me,” he continues via video call from Los Angeles, where he’s rehearsing for his solo tour.
“It’s especially odd for people like me who don’t play the guitar, like the Bonos of this world. It can be particularly humiliating if you do it badly, you’ve got nothing to hide behind.”
‘Get rid of the acting’
Berninger, 54, is supremely aware that audiences “can smell a fake a mile away”.
“After a while, you’ve got to take off that stupid costume because you start to get weird and become a dick,” he says.
“I’ve been through that. You even slip into caricature at home or on the school run.
“I have to tell myself, ‘I’m not on stage right now so why am I singing to the garbage men?’”
Berninger says things came to a head on The National’s last tour.
“I just thought, ‘Get rid of all the acting. If you’re in a bad mood, talk about it. Don’t pretend to be happy and confident if you’re not.’”
I can’t write a line unless it somehow rings with me emotionally Berninger
The reason I’m sharing these particular insights is because Get Sunk, five years in the making, brings the REAL Matt Berninger into sharp focus.
Though he actually auditioned for acting roles during the pandemic — “just trying to make the hustle but will never try again” — his song Breaking Into Acting, a duet with Meg Duffy (aka Hand Habits), deals openly with his “scam” stage persona.
“I can’t write a line unless it somehow rings with me emotionally,” he affirms when I ask about his refreshingly candid lyrics.
Get Sunk is the follow-up to Berninger’s solo debut, 2020’s Serpentine Prison, and began life the same year just as the Covid pandemic upended his and all our lives.
Unable to tour that record, his first without his National cohorts, he hunkered down in the Silver Lake district of LA with producer Sean O’Brien.
They came up with another album’s worth of songs, of which only four have survived — Inland Ocean, Junk, Little By Little and Times Of Difficulty.
The last of these contains the lines: “In times of heartache, get drunk/In times of tears, get sunk.”
These sentiments proved prophetic, as you’ll discover when their author tells us what happened next.
“Yes, I even wrote that when Biden was president,” quips Berninger, suggesting he’s not a fan of the present incumbent.
He adopts a more serious tone and adds: “We couldn’t put out a new record out because I hadn’t even been able to support Serpentine Prison. I didn’t want another one to disappear into the void.
“So I did a year of nothing and got really depressed.”
Berninger has talked about his battles with depression in the past but confesses that this bout proved particularly debilitating, and that it came with writer’s block and crushing insomnia.
“Some antidepressants helped a little but I was sleepless for weeks and months at a time,” he says as he begins an unflinching description of his turmoil.
‘Your brain melts down’
“Insomnia can really scramble your logic — you can’t leave the bedroom, you can’t look out the window but you also can’t sleep.
“You just pace and your brain melts down. That’s what happened to me.”
Berninger vividly recalls being unable to leave the house: “Sunlight depressed me, hummingbirds outside the window antagonised me. I had contempt for bumblebees because of their joy and because they didn’t give a f* about all my problems. I was like, ‘F* you!’
“That’s what depression does to you. It’s crazy and it took a healing process.
“I’d never been to the bottom before and I hope that was the bottom. I learned a lot.
“Am I back at the top? By no means. The bottom’s not as far down as we think it is. It’s always right there, really close.
“You could fall into a two-inch puddle and think you are at the bottom of the sea — but now I’ve got my neck above the waterline.”
Berninger reveals that two things kickstarted his recovery process.
“Getting back with The National helped pull me out,” he says.
“And moving from California to Connecticut.”
In 2023, he and his family, wife Carin Besser and teenage daughter Isla, upped sticks from LA’s beachfront resort of Venice for a rural idyll in the East Coast state not far north of New York City.
That, in turn, led him to re-engage with his solo project and the songs started to flow again.
Six new compositions were added to the original four and even most of those underwent rewrites with re-recorded vocals.
“I started to enjoy sunlight again and now I just can’t get enough of it,” he enthuses.
“I don’t have screens so hornets, bees and snakes come into the house and I kind of welcome them. I have reconnected to my love of life.”
I spent my wild youth with my older sister Rachel and my five cousins Berninger
The call of the wild has long run strong in Berninger and that is reflected in Get Sunk songs Inland Ocean and Frozen Oranges, both beautifully realised and dripping with nostalgia.
“I’ve never been to a gym in my life but find me a park or a woods or a hill or a trail,” he says.
During his childhood in Cincinnati, Ohio, he would spend bucolic holidays on his aunt and uncle’s farm in nearby Indiana.
“I spent my wild youth with my older sister Rachel and my five cousins,” says Berninger, as the cherished memories come flooding back.
‘We all had rifles’
“The seven of us would hike the railroad tracks to different towns, just like in the movie Stand By Me.
“We all had rifles. It was farm life and my aunt Elaine, also my godmother, was the matriarch. When I was about 12, I would chew tobacco in the fields while harvesting it with my cousins.
“I’d roll up the dried brown stuff, chew on it and get a buzz. I’ve been a nicotine aficionado ever since — though I don’t smoke cigarettes any more.”
Later, in the Eighties, the crop changed from tobacco to Christmas trees and Berninger remembers working among them through his college years.
Berninger began writing about his time in Indiana before his move to Connecticut but his new surroundings had a profound effect.
“I started to tune into how I felt as a kid, all that time I spent in the woods, just staring at creeks and bugs and snakes.
“I like being more connected to it again. I like to take my shoes off and walk around barefoot — it does something.”
However, Berninger adds that he wasn’t the driving force behind his return to the East Coast. (He spent 15 years in Brooklyn during the formative years of The National).
“I had built a house in Venice and I thought I was going to be there forever,” he says.
“My daughter was about to go to high school and she’s a big Gilmore Girls fan (the comedy set in a fictional Connecticut town). So it was really her and my wife’s decision to move.”
I’ve been writing lyrics on baseballs
for a long time Berninger
Once in his new and welcome surroundings, Berninger rediscovered his love of painting, and he began writing lyrics on old baseballs.
“Originally, I was more of a visual artist than a songwriter,” he says. “I did a design programme at the University Of Cincinnati and worked as a designer in New York City for ten years.
“In The National, I ended up painting lists of songs and what we could do with them on whiteboards. The band’s studios are filled with them.
“And I’ve been writing on baseballs for a long time because they take ink well and they feel good.
“I used to toss baseballs with my dad and now I do it with my daughter. It’s more fun than writing in a notebook. It slows you down and makes you think differently.”
If Get Sunk is the lyrically rich product of this unique process, it is also notable for guest appearances, including the aforementioned Hand Habits on Breaking Into Acting and Ronboy (Julia Laws) on the wistful Silver Jeep, also blessed with Kyle Resnick’s sublime trumpet.
There’s also a reappearance by R&B legend Booker T. Jones (best known for Green Onions) who produced Serpentine Prison and plays organ and keyboards on self-deprecating Junk, gently pleading Little By Little and life-affirming finale Times Of Difficulty.
I ask Berninger if he enjoys collaborating and my question prompts insights into some of The National’s high profile friends.
“The first time The National brought anybody in was Sufjan Stevens because Bryce (Dessner) was doing a lot of work with him. That’s how we met Annie Clark (St. Vincent).
“Sufjan brought so much — he added colour and energy. He gave us a way of thinking that changed our chemistry.”
He adds: “Obviously there’s Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers. These are huge stars but we knew these guys.
“Phoebe opened for us, one of the people we met in the trenches. Even Taylor I met six or seven years ago because she reached out and she was a fan. So it’s kind of organic.”
Berninger is at pains to point out that “they’re not plug-in names for the featuring credits. That’s not how we work.”
His bandmate, multi-instrumentalist Aaron Dessner, work- ed with Swift on her albums Folklore, Evermore and The Tortured Poets Department.
And Berninger adds graciously: “The National songs with Taylor on them are our most listened to songs in the world.
‘I’m just stuff’
“If you put The National into Spotify, the first couple of songs are Taylor and Aaron songs but it all makes sense.
“We started out as five dudes from Ohio but now it feels like a giant community, much more than a band.
“Everyone in The National is a total blood sucker for talent and we want to be infected by those people’s mastery.”
Ultimately, love, bravery and kindness are the only things that will survive. It makes me happy knowing that means there’s not much pressure on me Berninger
That said, this moment is all about one man’s voyage of self-discovery which has resulted in an album for the ages, Get Sunk.
Water is an abiding theme of the record, whether “it’s rain, the ocean, a river, a puddle, ice in a glass, a frozen pond, snow” or “fruit sustained by it like apples and oranges.”
Berninger signs off in thought-provoking style: “I stare into the deep end of swimming pools. I look out across the ocean all the time. I spend a lot of time in creeks.
“There’s something unknowing about water but it is why we’re all here on earth. It’s life, it’s death. A raindrop is a metaphor for heartbreak.
“Ultimately, love, bravery and kindness are the only things that will survive. It makes me happy knowing that means there’s not much pressure on me.
“I’m just stuff. I’m just water and molecules.”
MATT BERNINGER
Get Sunk
★★★★★
