At this point we know a lot more about the National’s day jobs than we do about this first clip from the band’s excellent album Boxer, but after watching we’re gonna guess the shoot stayed under budget. “Mistaken For Strangers”‘s shadow rock is an album standout, and director Tom Berninger (singer Matt’s bro) plays that dark card, casting long shadows and keeping it loose with lots of camera decapitation, stuffing the band in Matt’s Brooklyn apartment. Matt told Room Thirteen:
We tried to expose the energy of the band, it’s not a Björk video. It’s kind of low-fidelity concept, there are lots of people holding video cameras getting in shot; I guess it’s a kind of meta-video. I really love this video, although we’ve been told it’s not very MTV friendly!
We agree! But they don’t. So, watch it at MTV.
UPDATE: Or YouTube:
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album of the year. good lord, it’s beautiful.
Grrr, only in the US! But yes, amazing album and this is probably my favourite song from it.
hmmmm….I think I’ll go see them play tonight…they are playing with some other band.
Another fanboy here – yep, best album of the year
another great song…so excited to hear the rest.
they play the same night as feist here in san francisco. bah.
wow…thats a great song and even better video…
I love this band.
i dislike the national (underwhelming in concert for starters) but this video is really well done. although, i’m a sucker for anything meta.
Any tips for those of us outside the U.S?
Song rocks! They did a great job trying to stuff all those guys in the same room and still making it look fantastic.
For those of you outside the US, it looks like The National is touring in Europe this summer if you wanna check ‘em out. Here’s the link to a site I found on them. And no, it’s NOT mine.
http://www.americanmary.com/shows/
Hope this helps those of you who aren’t in America.
these are the sweetest guys i’ve met all year, and their show translated really well in the giant seated arcade fire venue. i’m itching to hear more
I agree with Lindey K – Arcade Fire are lucky that they are fairly ridiculous live because The National were incredible. They do a great job of making the low key songs into more rockin live songs. The normally reserved (read: boring) DC crowd was really into the set.
yep – well worth the Ebay fees last night. it’s hard work to get a crowd going in that place but AF had no problems.
a few Arcade Fire live and demo tracks here:
http://www.butterteam.blogspot.com
yes it’s my site; enjoy!
hm…i want to have the national at the near top of 2007′s bands, but i can’t and this is mainly because of stereogum. Yet…I still go to stereogum first for news why is this… why why why why!!
Both the National and Arcade Fire joined Beirut on stage tonight at the Bowery… fucking beautiful… oh man oh man.
*shivers*
Totally boring musically. Stunted sense of melody, inhibited vocally, runts of music. Ambience is not a replacement for ability or talent. Drone on mutineers against quality. Drone on.
so i guess you don’t like it? idiot. the song is brilliant.