Mr Kinski's Music Shack

Sleep Well Beast is the seventh album from Cincinnati’s The National, and the follow up to the 2013 release Trouble Will Find Me.

I’ve always loved the more mid-paced, atmospheric songs such as Lemonworld, Fireproof and the haunting I Need My Girl so Sleep Well Beast is a pure delight for me. Opening with glitchy percussion and buried deep in the mix atmospherics, Nobody Else Will Be There sets the scene for the majority of the album.

“Its getting cold again but New York’s gorgeous”

Sleep Well Beast is stuffed to the brim with a mix of memories, the trials and tribulations of getting older and attempts to make sense of our messed up world.

I think its a brave move opening the album with one of the slower paced tracks, rather than a more obvious opener such as Day I Die. After the disappointment of the last Arcade Fire album, its great to be reminded that there is still plenty of great alternative rock coming from across the Atlantic.

Walk It Back is a perfect example of how simplicity can lead to the most beautiful music. The simple three note guitar riff, underpinned by strings, in the songs mid-section is one of the most moving parts of the album. Talking of great guitar work – the white-hot guitar solo that leads into a wonderful delay heavy rhodes piano and rhythm outro on lead single The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness is a moment of pure magic.

“I can’t explain it any other, any other way”

Born To Beg feels like a love song to New York and to an un-named someone. The often discordant electronica bubbling alongside the repeating piano motif works well, and shines a bright light onto the aching lyrics.

Turtleneck is the album’s noisiest track, with a late 80s / early 90s U2 referencing guitar line in the 1st verse, and what sounds like a dig at the current resident of The White House. Achtung baby!

Empire Line has one of the album’s most infectious choruses and some Fripp like squealing, processed guitar lines as the track heads to its conclusion.

The intro to I’ll Still Destroy You sounds like 80s Bill Nelson – all handclaps and crazy marimba. The arrangement and instrumentation is playful and endearing, and at odds with the more sombre feel of the majority of the album. I would have loved to hear this song blaring out of an FM radio in the 80s. This one is a keeper!

Of course, after such a frenzied and uplifting track, you just know that the comedown is waiting just around the corner. Guilty Party is the delicious antidote to the joy that preceded it. The end section of Guilty Party, with a trumpet line battling for your attention against a looping guitar melody, is awe-inspiring.

“Its nobody’s fault – no guilty party”

Carin At The Liquor Store is the first of a pair of songs that almost feel like standards from the mid 1950s. The arrangement and band performances feel effortless on this track.

Dark Side Of The Gym is my favourite song on the album, and likely to be one of my favourite songs of 2017. After a quiet, unassuming opening and chorus, the chords of verse two hit hard. The song slowly builds but keeps its core simplicity throughout.

And how can you not fall in love with a verse like this:

“I have dreams of anonymous castrati, singing to us from the trees
I have dreams of the first man and first lady, singing to us from the sea”

Seriously, everyone else just stop writing your self-obsessed lyrics and ask Matt Berninger and Carin Besser to supply your words from now on.

The psychedelic ending to Dark Side Of The Gym leads into the album’s title track and final song. The percussion and electronica backing of Sleep Well Beast has a feel of some of Bjork’s darker material. The fuzzy guitar and deep synths add a feeling of disquiet that mirror the lyrics of loss and dread.

“Thought that you were something good that I would always keep”

I hope you feel like diving into the new album by The National. Let me know if you enjoyed the album by leaving a comment below.

Buy The National – Sleep Well Beast on CD

Buy The National – Sleep Well Beast on vinyl

Buy The National – Trouble Will Find Me on vinyl

Cobalt Chapel are a psychedelic / folk duo featuring Cecilia Fage (Matt Berry & The Maypoles) and Jarrod Gosling (I Monster, Regal Worm), and they have just released their debut album on the KLove label.

The late 60s / early 70s inspired music is built round the vocals of Fage and the classic keyboards (mostly organ) and drum machines of Gosling.

The album is very dark and perfectly suited to the Autumn and Winter seasons. The songs conjure up moods and memories from an England long lost to technology, reality television, rampant commercialism and a loss of imagination and mystery.

Album opener We Come Willingly is a tale of murder, driven by the album’s signature organs and vintage drum machines fed through an army of effects.

Fruit Falls From The Apple Tree continues the baroque ‘n roll feel, with a lovely layered vocal during the middle section, as the keyboards and low bassline shuffles alongside the powerful drums. I love the mixture of progressive and folk music that runs through all the songs on this fine debut album. And an album is what it is – built to be heard in one setting, in sequence, so you appreciate the journey as the artist intended.

Ava Gardner is a short instrumental that precedes one of my favourite tracks on the album, Who Are The Strange.

Reminding me a little of early Portishead mixed with The Shortwave Set (whatever happened to them?), this was the first track that Fage and Gosling wrote together.

The lyrics tell the story of a near-death experience and the rattling effects and stabbing organ are as unsettling as the lyrical content.

The Lamb is a cover of the John Tavener choral piece that you may know from the film Children of Men, and is the most moving track on the album. The arrangement is simple but its a beautiful, stunning performance, with wonderful harmonies from Cecilia Fage.

Black Eyes is inspired by the 1975 film The Stepford Wives. Distorted drums and keys, along with a slowly mutating arrangement, underpin this sad song of transformation and loss of will.

Singing Camberwell Beauty is the first song that I heard from the album, and it remains a favourite. A playful fairground waltz that gets darker as it progresses – and a song that will surely appeal to Saint Etienne fans due to the spoken interlude. 

Singing Camberwell Beauty is not “the last waltz” on the album,  as Maze is a short Camberwick Green on acid piece that leads into Two.  The album cover will give you a clue about the “two heartbeats” referenced in the song.

Horratia is “the story of an aging B-movie actress revisiting her life and career; a young face that many people once remembered and now an old face that is all but forgotten, except in the minds of obsessed horror/sci-fi convention-goers…” I love the twists and turns in the instrumentation on this track.

Positive Negative is inspired by The Avengers, and has a wonderful, slow building malevolent end section as layer upon layer of distorted organs pile on top of the vocals.

The album ends on Three Paths Charm and is the longest track in this collection. A mostly instrumental piece, with the occasional backward vocal lines and chants, acting almost as a summary of what has gone before.

Cobalt Chapel is a captivating first release, and there is a real continuity in the instruments used and the textures and moods they create. Its very easy to lose yourself in this album, and I am really looking forward to what the bewitching partnership of Cecilia Fage and Jarrod Gosling cook up in the (hopefully near) future.

Buy the CD on Amazon

Buy the Vinyl on Amazon