29. The return of The National (and especially Matt Berninger)

1 October 2023

Image: Midjourney.

I.

The first time I saw The National was in 2011 at De Doelen. The album High Violet was less than a year old, but it had made a deep impression the way music sometimes can. I still think it’s the best thing The National has made, and one of the best albums ever.

After that intimate show in Rotterdam I saw them a few more times, at the HMH and later AFAS. Those were concerts of varying quality, but the band always gives everything. At the Ziggo Dome this week The National was at the top of their game. A little less raw around the edges, and certainly less drink in the frontman, and therefore — Three highlights if I have to choose: Squalor Victoria, Mr. November and a truly extraordinary live version of About Today. The silence that falls in the middle, and that build!

They were clearly enjoying themselves. That hasn’t always been the case lately. “A year ago, performing felt like a trip to the dentist,” Matt Berninger told The Independent. Depression and writer’s block had plagued him during the pandemic and its aftermath.

Good to have him back. The earlier First Two Pages of Frankenstein, released this year, is The National’s first album in four years. I had a quick browse and the first two pages of Frankenstein are roughly about an explorer on an expedition to the North Pole. “I have no lack of courage or determination, but sometimes I suddenly lose heart and all hope fades. The journey will be long and hard and will demand everything of me, and I must keep up the spirits of both myself and my crew.”

Berninger managed to pull himself out of that dark valley and now they find themselves reinventing themselves from time to time. Smoke Detector, a standout on the most recent record Laugh Track (the second of this year), came together during a soundcheck in Vancouver. The band started jamming and couldn’t stop. There was no holding back. “It was like a forest fire that just kept burning,” says guitarist Bryce Dessner. He looked over at Berninger and saw him come alive. “This man is fully back, fearless,” he knew. And we could see that too at the Ziggo Dome.

II.

Monday was a bad day to work from home for employees of chipmaker NXP. Apple CEO Tim Cook came to visit. In secret. But the news quickly spread through the Eindhoven company and at the end of his visit Cook took the time to pose for photos with dozens of people who had rushed to the auditorium.

The Apple boss was in Europe this week, visiting companies and developers. Cook also stopped by Brussels to meet with European Commissioner Thierry Breton — the person who, you might say, stripped Apple of its Lightning cables and had them replaced with USB-C. “Next step: opening the doors to competitors,” Breton wrote after his meeting with Cook. The idea of the Digital Markets Act he is referring to is, for instance, that WhatsApp users could also chat with people on iMessage.

At NXP I was given five minutes to ask Cook a few questions. I asked him about the strict regulations in Europe that tech companies must increasingly comply with. Cook responded casually. “Rules exist everywhere; our goal is to comply with them.”

Read my report on Tim Cook’s visit to NXP on NU.nl.

III.

Congratulations: the oldest still-active torrent turns 20. YouTube and Facebook did not yet exist when, in September 2003, a short film called The Fanimatrix was shared via BitTorrent. Yes, a video based on The Matrix, made by fans.

According to TorrentFreak, the film had a budget of 800 dollars, half of which went on a leather jacket. I downloaded The Fanimatrix out of curiosity. The 130 MB .avi file arrived within seconds thanks to 150 active seeders.

The film itself is actually better than you might expect. The music, lighting and action are pretty on point when you consider this was such a cheap amateur project. The image quality leaves something to be desired these days, of course. If you’d rather not torrent but you’re curious: it’s on YouTube.

PS.

Lucky Fonz III made a great music video (in one take!) for his song Een klein beetje dood from the wonderful album Hemellichamen. “What I love about it is that so many of my favourite themes come together,” he says himself. “The relationship between humour and seriousness, the mixing of ‘unmixable’ styles (there’s a hefty gabber kick underneath this chanson!), the exploration of the possibility of transformation, the relationship between the individual and the community, and the human body.”

Recorded at one of the nicest venues in Utrecht: the Ping Pong Club.

There’s a new album from Wilco. And good news: it’s their best in years. There’s a little more room to colour outside the lines again, you hear it immediately on the opening track Infinite Surprise.

Netflix has four new short films by Wes Anderson. They are all adaptations of Roald Dahl stories, told exactly as he wrote them but with Anderson’s visual flair. I’ve already watched The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and it comes highly recommended.

Typical Netflix, though, to make so little noise about four new Wes Anderson films. You barely hear anything about them. Film critic Matt Singer is baffled too: “Why weren’t they bundled into one anthology film, a Wes Anderson take on Roald Dahl, so you could really make a splash? I don’t get it.” Fair point.

Meta unveiled its first mixed-reality headset: the Quest 3. This will be the somewhat more affordable challenger to Apple’s Vision Pro, arriving next year. During the presentation the device looked promising, but whether it works well in practice is not something I can tell you.

Meta is not making review units available to the press in the Netherlands — despite the company claiming it finds community very important. All the stranger, then, that the media can’t inform consumers before they make a purchase. Withholding a test device has caused frustration among Dutch tech journalists. Bram van Dijk vented his frustrations on Bright: is Meta perhaps afraid of negative reviews?

I love the neighbourhood book swap. Those little cabinets full of books you find outside or at stations. The idea is that you take a book and leave one behind. You sometimes find real gems — that’s how I came by Congo by David Van Reybrouck, The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch and The Darkroom of Damocles by W.F. Hermans. NRC has a feature on the neighbourhood book swap: Lots of Lucinda Riley, Dan Brown and the New Testament.

Besides Tim Cook, I also spoke with Tim Kuik this week. I find that combination quite amusing. I’ll probably only experience that pair of interviews in the same week once in my life. Kuik is the chairman of the Stichting BREIN foundation, which has been fighting online piracy for years. I spoke to him because illegal downloads have been on the rise again recently.

Next year’s Boekenweek gift will be written by the Chabot family. Well then. This year there’s also no Boekenweek essay; instead Bart Chabot is compiling a poetry anthology. The headline on Teletext read: Chabots to make Boekenweek gift. I misread it as chatbots and the dystopian picture was complete.

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