Matt Berninger and the beauty of sinking.
Get Sunkthe second solo album by Matt Berningerstarts with something that is not very common in its universe: a small ray of sunlight. “Inland Ocean”co-written with Walter Martin of The Walkmen and with choirs of Julia Laws (Ronboy)is supported by a breathy guitar and an echo-soaked saxophone, almost as if it were a demo lost from some disk Roxy Music. It's an unexpectedly bright entry for someone who has made a career perfecting melancholy.
What follows is a collection of songs where the leader of The National returns to do what he knows best: dissect sadness with surgical precision, but this time with more stylistic freedom and a looser spirit. Get Sunk It does not seek to replicate the existential weight of its main band, but rather to offer a looser, more permissive space, where introspection coexists with self-parody, poetry with routine, disenchantment with a very dry sense of humor.
Berninger finds here a new balance between solemnity and play. “Bonnet of Pins” is a perfect example: a song with an almost danceable rhythm, lyrics full of surreal images and a vocal delivery that goes from indifferent to furious without changing volume. “Nowhere Special” refer more directly to The Nationalbut it feels less contained, as if he's stopped worrying about maintaining a form and is simply letting out what's inside him.
In other pieces, such as “Frozen Oranges” either “No Love”, Berninger returns to his most comfortable zone: slow, fragile songs that seem written in a low voice. But even there, something has changed. His voice—that drawled, instantly recognizable baritone—sounds less tragic and more everyday, like that of someone who is not looking for answers, but for ways to keep asking. The production of the album, by collaborators such as Booker T. Jones and Meg Duffy (Hand Habits)accompanies it with subtlety and warmth: orchestral arrangements, folk touches, moments with hints of jazz that expand without saturating.
One of the greatest achievements of Get Sunk It is how he mixes the intimate with the domestic without one thing downplaying the other. In “Silver Jeep”For example, a reflection on emotional stability intersects with a note about the gardener and a note on the water faucet. Everything fits in the same sentence, in the same world.
The closure, “Times of Difficulty”works as a summary and a farewell. That choral cry of “Get drunk! Get sunk!” It could be read as a joke, a bar slogan, but also as a form of emotional surrender. There is something liberating in that phrase: stop resisting, accept the flow, sink not as defeat, but as a form of exploration.
Get Sunk It is not a bombastic or revolutionary album. But it is an honest and deeply human portrait of someone who continues to search for meaning among stillness, irony and wear and tear. Matt Berninger You don't need to shout to move. Sometimes it's enough to sink a little deeper.
