There isn’t one. Mainly because nobody outside of the band and their inner circle even knew about this album before Friday night, when frontman Matt Berninger announced its impending arrival from the stage Friday night at the band’s Homecoming festival in Cincinnati. The National’s second album of the year — and the follow up to “The First Two Pages Of Frankenstein” — will be out digitally at midnight Sunday.
This surprise companion to The National’s April release “First Two Pages of Frankenstein”, “Laugh Track” is the band’s most freewheeling, all-hands-on-deck album in years. If “Frankenstein” represented a rebuilding of trust between group members after 20+ years together, the vibrant, exploratory “Laugh Track” is both the product of that faith and a new statement of intent.
Revelling in the license to radically upend its creative process, The National honed most of this material in live performances on tour, and captured those invigorated versions in impromptu sessions at producer Tucker Martine’s Portland studio. Two nights later in Vancouver, the nearly eight-minute album closer “Smoke Detector” was recorded during soundcheck, completing a body of work bristling with spontaneity and vintage rock energy that makes a perfect complement to the songs found on its more introspective predecessor.
‘Smoke Detector’ is taken from ‘Laugh Track’ , via 4AD Records
The Fat Angel Sings 