As with my second War on Drugs writeup, I will note a few of the differences between this show and the one in Chicago. The band was slightly hamstrung by an 11:00 pm curfew, so they had to make some compromises. They did not bring on Adam Granduciel to cover Echo and the Bunnymen, nor Lucius to help out with “Rylan,” which they did not play at all. They also had to cut down one of the songs in the encore – they teased playing “Not in Kansas,” but cut it off quickly. That was a bit of a shame because the Madison crowd was quite loud and active by the end of the show, certainly more so than the Chicago crowd. This felt like the case especially after the sun went down. Granted, it was a Thursday rather than a Tuesday, and I was much closer to the stage.
I was excited that they opened with “Don’t Swallow the Cap,” one of my favorites of theirs, after they did not play it two nights before. The snaring electric guitar that opens up brought the energy up immediately. Among their patently mixed in slow acoustic songs was “Wasp Nest,” which was played for the first time on the tour. It is a song from their 2004 album Cherry Tree, one that I was not familiar with prior. While difficult to decipher Matt Berninger’s sometimes mumbling lyrics live, the song contains striking imagery like “A wet martini in a paper cup,” and “You’re poison in a pretty glass.” The lyrics are a simple exposé of Berninger’s strength as a composer. While not complex or too ambitious, it is an example of one of the band’s earlier songs that does not dip into the convolution that I discuss in the post from the Chicago show.
Once again, The National showed wonderful execution of a performance with an intentional narrative arc. This time, they started off with a more electric inciting incident, and the rising action moved through ebbs and flows of tempo, volume and energy. The arc climaxed in the encore, which went from the fiery “Mr. November,” to the dynamic “Terrible Love,” to the resolution that is “About Today.” While not the “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks” sing-along that ended the show in Chicago, the acoustic ending let the crowd calm down steadily, before letting them on their way.