The National Are Learning to Be Rock Stars

It’s been a good week for faux-gloom-rockers the National. Their daily itinerary: Show up to Bowery Ballroom. Play music for sold-out crowd. Have chicks say you’re awesome all night afterward. Wake up. Repeat five times. The Brooklynites have come a long way in the last few years; where once they seemed to need booze to look comfortable onstage, now the booze only amplifies their natural self-confidence. And it’s not Pitchforkian ego-inflation giving them that confidence, but good old-fashioned audience love. Gushing front-rowers handed lead crooner Matt Berninger presents (a magazine — hey, it’s a start); later on, another adoring fan screamed at the top of her lungs, “You’re rock stars!� much to Berninger’s delight. Dudes shouted requests and, like rock stars, the National cheerfully ignored them.

Even better than, say, Interpol, the National have nearly perfected the temperamental moody-guy sound, with Berninger’s baritone playing nicely with the dark crescendos that each song seems to take. The loud and guitar-heavy “Mr. November� saw Berninger end up in the audience, screaming the refrain, “I won’t fuck us over, I’m Mr. November.� “Lit Up� was also delivered with the same intensity, as was evident from the response: Either the audience was crazy for the song, or they were a bit lit up themselves. Toward the end, a European “we clap in rhythm� got under way, culminating with a sped-up version of “Fake Empire,� the lead single off their new album, Boxer. As Berninger and the band basked in their newfound rock-starness, it was easy to see they were having a very good week indeed. —Michael D. Ayers