After a break from the road, alt-rock band The National is back on tour, and playing a pair of shows in the WAMC listening area this week. WAMC's Jesse King spoke with drummer Bryan Devendorf.
By virtue of their frontman, The National have always claimed their musical ancestry in the likes Hüsker Dü and The Smiths, from namechecking
Bona Drag and The Cramps to all but inhaling the melodic smoke trails of
Meet Me In The Bathroom-era New York of the late 1990s. If the Cincinnati rockers came to embody the self-loathing hangover and betterment rituals of the city’s debauchery – they, the future sonic librarians circling the buffet at the Plant Records afterparty – LNZNDRF swaps the bathroom for the Muster Station with their second self-titled record: a navel-gazing, meditative, pedal-staring sister act, richly experimental within its blissed-out kosmische framework.