There’s No Leaving New York, a mini-festival curated by The National, featured performances from bands that played everything from blues to ambient pop to alt-country and a set from The National that explored their entire discography and peppered it with synthy textures and trippy visuals.
The day began with Adia Victoria, the bluesy musician who layered her music with punk and hard rock. She played “Stuck in the South,” and her raspy vocals crackled over the speakers while guitars played worried notes and put listeners into a trance. On “Dope Queen Blues” Victoria explores more electronic textures and paired them with the sounds of the Deep South.
Shortly after Victoria’s performance, Phoebe Bridgers played next. Her powerful voice mixed with mumbling lyrics and folky guitars were a departure from Victoria’s set and mellowed out the crowd while she sang “Smoke Signals.” She next played “Georgia” from Stranger in the Alps and while some may consider her mumbling lyrics “Sometimes in the pouring rain / He’ll fall in the mud and get back up again” distracting, it instead forces the listener to engage with the song and listen to all of the complex and interesting instrumentals and textures in the music. The mumbling acts as an instrument on its own and rounds out the rest of the song. Bridgers is also known for the group boygenius that she formed with Julien Baker and remarked “The world is not good enough for Julien Baker” before she sang their song “Me & My Dog.” She ended with “Motion Sickness” and thanked the crowd before setting down her instrument and walking off stage.
The ambient pop band Cigarettes After Sex played a lingering set that began with a small medical emergency. They opened with “Crush” and lead singer Greg Gonzalez sang out over echoey guitars and drums. They began to play “Each Time You Fall in Love” when Gonzalez stopped singing after noticing a group of people all waving their hands and pointing to someone in the crowd. He asked if everything was okay and when he realized it wasn’t, he asked for a medic over the speaker. They stopped playing and only resumed once everyone learned the person was going to be okay and picked up the song right where they left off. Gonzalez with his vocals is able to hit higher registers and on songs like “Affection” and “John Wayne,” he’s added a layer to the ambiance that lingers out and hangs above the crowd. They closed with “Apocalypse,” a somewhat louder song than the previous and finished their set without any more medical emergencies.
While the crowd patiently waited for Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)” boomed over the speakers and the audience formed a giant dance circle while men in cowboy boots and hipsters came together and danced their own interpretation to the song. Shortly after, the lights went out and Isbell came out onto the stage. He thanked everyone for coming out to see him before beginning with “Hope the High Road” and following with “24 Frames.” One thing noticeable in all of Isbell’s music is that he is a storyteller. He injects his music with familial themes and religious undertones. He sings, “This is how you make yourself call your mother / And this is how you make yourself closer to your brother” and “You thought God was an architect, now you know / He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow.” On “Cover Me Up” he sings about his struggle with addiction while in the band Drive-By Truckers and when he sang “But I sobered up and I swore off that stuff / Forever this time,” as the crowd applauded in support. He slowed things down and sang his last song “If We Were Vampires.”
After four bands and almost five hours of music, The National closed out the evening. Projected behind the stage was a screen lit up in blue with the words “Please Stand By” before the lights cut out and Matt Berninger stood at the front of the stage gripping the microphone stand. They played “Nobody Else Will Be There” from the 2017 release Sleep Well Beast for their first song. For songs “I Need My Girl” and “Sorrow” Berninger brought out Phoebe Bridgers, and the two combined vocals to perform a duet that delighted the audience. They performed a handful of songs from High Violet which included “Afraid of Everyone,” “England” and “Conversation 16.” On “England” Berninger’s deep, deadpan vocals wound around the piano and big drums while he sang “Can someone send a runner / Through the weather that I’m under / For the feeling I lost today.” The band brought the crowd back to 2005 with the song “Secret Meeting” from Alligator, and listeners heard the quiet intensity of repetitive guitars paired with Berninger’s voice. For the encore, they played some of their best and popular songs “Bloodbuzz Ohio” and “Mr. November” where Berninger shouts into the microphone “I won’t fuck us over, I’m Mr. November / I’m Mr. November, I won’t fuck us over.” They played “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks” for the final song and the crowd cheered as the band waved and disappeared under the thick layer of smoke bursting out from machines.
The National Setlist:
Nobody Else Will Be There
Don’t Swallow the Cap
Guilty Party
I Should Live in Salt
Afraid of Everyone
Born to Beg
Empire Line
I Need My Girl
Sorrow
Wasp Nest
Secret Meeting
Conversation 16
Apartment Story
Carin at the Liquor Store
England
Day I Die
About Today
Encore:
Rylan
Bloodbuzz Ohio
Mr. November
Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks
Photo Credit: Sharon Alagna
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