Last September, I paid good money to see Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, open for The National. That tour was much blogged about, as the headliners consistently played to half full rooms after people left following the super-hyped CYHSY. Many that stuck around commented that the people who bolted missed the better band. I’m not proud to say, I am one of those people that left early. At that time, The National had completely slipped under my radar. Perhaps I was confusing them with Grand National (who I heard and didn’t like), but I went outside between sets to join some friends while they had a cigarette, one thing led to the other, and we never did make it back inside. After their 3rd LP Alligator made numerous end of year lists, it’s been on constant rotation on my iPod. Not really in the middle of a tour anymore, the Brooklyn based band was to play a one off show at the Bowery Ballroom last night, and I jumped at the chance to finally see them. The show sold out almost immediately, and with no room in the schedule to add a night it was disapointingly moved to the larger, and greatly inferior, Webster Hall.
If the band was not getting their due during last fall’s tour, they were now. They were met with a full house, at a major venue in NYC, and an enthusiastic one at that. I would say the crowd was more into this show than your typical jaded NYC audience. There was a lot of jumping around and dancing for a band I never really considered one to dance too. They handled the big room with ease. Their spirited renditions of faster album tracks like Abel and namely, Mr. November got the crowd going. On the latter song, lead singer Matt Berninger stormed about the stage bellowing over and over the title line “I won’t fuck us over, I’m Mr. November”, the audience aptly responding in a frenzy. What really made this a great show was the bands ability to switch gears between their faster stuff and more delicate songs such as ‘Soho Riots’ and ‘City Middle’ which were even more gentle than the originals. The guitar interplay between Scott Devendorf and Bryce Dressner was further complimented by a violinist, while Berninger’s cryptic, spoken word vocals took center stage. The band played on for over 90 minutes, thanking the crowd at the end for coming back to see them after their first sold out show at the Mercury Lounge one year ago. At a time when bands are rocketing to stardom on the merit of one good review, it’s nice to see these guys do it the old fashioned way, with hard work and great songs.
