The National have revealed that they have another album’s worth of new material – and that it won’t be such a long wait until fans get to hear new songs.
The band are currently on course to score their first UK number one with their latest album ‘Sleep Well Beast‘, and it looks like yet more new songs could be coming sooner than expected. In an interview with NME, the band said that they have plenty of leftover songs from recent years’ writing sessions.
“Oddly, there was a whole other strain of music that we were making that we were all very excited about,” guitarist Aaron Dessner told NME. “That was more of us playing in a room and more of a conventional ‘National as a rock band’ thing. There was a brightness to it, and a lot of the songs didn’t need anything adding to them. There was a whole batch of stuff like that a couple of years ago, then we ended up going down all these different rabbit holes and ended up where we are now on ‘Sleep Well Beast’.
“Part of me wonders if we’ll revisit some of what we were doing before. It was a breath of fresh air. We were capturing something that felt almost complete.”
Brother and fellow guitarist Bryce Dessner added: “There are all kinds of new techniques and sounds we’re exploring and we could go in way deeper. Aaron and I have been exploring that in a deeper way already, and other things that we’re doing but I think I could see us doing something far more simple as well.
“The last thing we do after finishing a record is plan a next one. I will say we have a lot of music that we’ve made so there is more than one record there. In the short-term we have to work out if and how we use any of that.”
With the band currently talking about taking a mobile studio with them on the road to work on new tracks, frontman Matt Berninger added that it certainly wouldn’t be another four year wait between albums like it was since 2013’s ‘Trouble Will Find Me‘.
“It will definitely be less than four years,” Berninger told NME. “I don’t know if it will come in the form of a National record, but we’ve been doing a tonne of music together for stuff that might be for other things. There’s no plan to do a ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac’ kind of two album deal.”
‘Sleep Well Beast’ by The National is out now. Their upcoming UK and Ireland tour dates are below. Tickets are available here.
September 16 – Cork Opera House, Cork
September 17 – Vicar Street, Dublin
September 18 – Vicar Street, Dublin
September 20 – Usher Hall, Edinburgh
September 21 – Usher Hall, Edinburgh
September 22 – O2 Apollo, Manchester
September 23 – O2 Apollo, Manchester
September 25 – Eventim Hammersmith Apollo, London
September 26 – Eventim Hammersmith Apollo, London
September 27 – Eventim Hammersmith Apollo, London
September 28 – Eventim Hammersmith Apollo, London