The National's two sold out London shows, we dragged frontman Matt Berninger down to the very bowels of Alexandra Palace to talk about his battle with depression and writer's block, relighting the flame, their two 2023 albums 'First Two Pages Of Frankenstein' and 'Laugh Track', working with Phoebe Bridgers and Taylor Swift, the future of the band, and Dos Apes – with sitcom written with brother Tom.
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00:00 It was still months before I got back into mental and emotional shape.
00:09 I'm not in that great of physical shape, but everything else is much more...
00:14 I saw you sprint through the crowd last night. I had some moves.
00:17 Yeah, I get clamour. I don't sprightly go over the barrier like I used to.
00:25 IN CONVERSATION WITH MATT BERNINGER
00:31 Hi, I'm Andrew Trendle. You're watching Enemies In Conversation.
00:33 And we're here today with The Nationals' Matt Berninger.
00:36 Hi. How you doing, man? Good, how are you?
00:38 Yeah, good. Welcome. Well, I mean, it's hard to feel anything down here.
00:42 We're in Andrew's bedroom. He just modelled this way.
00:46 But we're actually in the bowels of Alexandra Palace.
00:51 Did you know, I learnt something today on the way down here, where we are now.
00:55 This used to be used as an internment camp during World War II.
00:58 Oh, no, really? Yeah. Wow.
01:00 Do you believe in ghosts?
01:02 I don't believe in ghosts, but I believe in the power of the belief in ghosts.
01:07 Yeah, yeah. You know what I'm saying?
01:09 Like the spirituality and all that. Same thing with God.
01:11 It's like, I don't really believe in it, but I believe in its power.
01:14 But it's kind of nice down here. It's peaceful.
01:17 I live in a house that's 202 years old right now.
01:20 And I figured there must have been like 15 families.
01:23 If a baby was born there, they would have been in their 40s during the American Civil War.
01:29 Yeah.
01:30 Yeah, it feels like a good vibe. I like it.
01:34 We are at Alexandra Palace because The National are playing two nights back to back.
01:39 And I think Aaron said from stage last night that you weren't going to repeat any songs.
01:44 We're going to – yeah, we're not going to repeat any songs.
01:47 And I mean, we could probably – we have a lot of songs.
01:52 And we could probably play like a week without them.
01:56 But yeah, we've been playing a lot of really old stuff and stuff that we haven't played at all yet.
02:03 So every night is a disaster in one fun way or another.
02:10 But yeah, that has been a huge sort of, I don't know, breaking out of a – and mostly it was me.
02:19 I think before I used to like really want to stay on a limited set list just because of my capacity to memorize that many songs.
02:30 And then I stopped worrying about all that.
02:34 And now it's kind of like it's much more fun every night to be splashing around in fresh waves that you hadn't –
02:43 water that you hadn't heard in a long time and try to like dive back into old songs.
02:48 And yeah, it's really revitalized everybody in the band.
02:53 But I think for me it was kind of the hardest thing to do.
02:58 The rest have been trying to get me to do bigger, longer set lists for a long time.
03:04 And I was always nervous about that. But not anymore.
03:08 Well, it's quite cool. This not repeating thing. I think I read Pearl Jam do it.
03:12 But I think most notably Metallica did it recently. And someone sent me a text yesterday saying The National are doing a Metallica.
03:18 Yeah. Well, how many nights did Metallica do those?
03:20 Just two.
03:21 Just two? Really?
03:22 Yeah. But have you come away with a sense of pride? I mean, do you feel new muscles working in your brain?
03:27 Yeah. I mean, the playing together and everything.
03:30 And I've been learning how to do the show after show and the travel and all that stuff that everybody complains about.
03:40 And I won't complain about it. But it's – I shut down completely in between shows and do as little as possible.
03:49 I just kind of pull the curtains closed and only really sort of come out of that a little bit before showtime.
03:58 And that's the only way I can do it. If I'm trying to live some sort of lifestyle on the road or take in the world, then I can't do this.
04:10 And I have to – this is why I'm here.
04:13 So doing this really well every night makes the whole thing just so much more healthy mentally and physically and everything.
04:22 So you don't have some typical London hangs you try and tend to while you're here?
04:26 Do I? I don't. I mean, the hotels.
04:31 Do they put you in good hotels?
04:33 Yeah. We've been at a variety of amazing hotels. I try to kind of – when we're on tour, I get into a madman or succession sort of vibe where it's just weird, great little environments and stuff like that.
04:52 It's always really lonely and depressing like all those environments are in those shows, but it's like I kind of go into sort of an odd five-star dystopian world.
05:03 Five-star dystopia is a good album name.
05:05 It's how I get through touring. I have learned many weird little rituals of just staying – getting healthy about it.
05:13 But the show last night was incredible. It felt like there was kind of a very different energy to previous national tours. I just wondered if you were approaching these shows differently, if you felt.
05:24 I don't – I mean, there's – it feels all like the natural energy that we've kind of always had live.
05:36 We're a different live band than we are a studio band, but I do think there were so many years where no one was touring, we weren't touring, and we were writing from a non-touring place, and I was coming out of a long period where I just dried up.
05:54 I talked a lot about that, but I was in a depression. I just couldn't write, and that triggered a panic of never being able to go back and do this thing, which is the thing I love to do, and I'm better at it than anything else, and I love to do it.
06:09 And so when I couldn't do that, that was pretty terrifying.
06:12 But us slightly climbing back into the studio together, even that was really hard for me.
06:19 And then crafting some of those songs, which became this first half of this double album.
06:26 The double album thing is really my – the way I think of the whole album, first pages of Frankenstein and this new record, Laugh Track.
06:33 But yeah, the first one was just kind of plugging things in and turning on the switches a little bit.
06:40 And then we started touring, and that energy of the things heating up, and my brain and heart and soul heating up, and the whole band warming up, that kind of infects the next record a lot.
06:57 Yeah, it's been a funny thing. So we're kind of – everything of these last two records, we're trying to play almost all of it here and there, sprinkled throughout the sets, and all of them are feeling like it's suddenly with the whole mechanism, the whole machine, the whole animal is like the blood is flowing in all the parts of the brain and machine.
07:20 So that feels really good and really healthy. Yeah, and it was kind of a slow process for us coming out of that really, you know, when everything shut down.
07:31 And so for everybody, it's been – but me especially, it took me a long time to come out of it.
07:37 Well, no, I remember, because the last time we spoke was just as Serpentine Prison was about to come out.
07:44 I remember in the run-up to that, we invited you to just as – at the end of the "I Am Easy to Find" run going into Serpentine Prison, at that point you said you felt like Bradley Cooper in Limitless.
07:54 You were just firing on all cylinders.
07:56 Yeah, I had a lot of things, had a lot of really cool projects that were – I mean, that stuff and a lot – like writing a lot of songs with a lot of different people.
08:08 We had been working on a musical with Peter Dinklage and Erica Schmidt.
08:12 We were – and my brother and wife and I were in development with a TV show, all that kind of stuff.
08:20 There were a lot of things, a lot of things cooking right at that moment when COVID hit.
08:28 And a funny part of it, it was like I think I had way too many things going, you know.
08:33 And so in a weird way, I had to put – I had so many – I have a list of like seven big projects that I had cooking at the same time that I had to like call everyone I was involved with and all of them and say, "It's not going to happen at all.
08:49 I can't promise it'll come back because nobody knows."
08:53 And so that was in a weird way, I think I had to – it was a relief.
09:00 And so for like the first year or so of the lockdown, the shutdown, I was in a really blissful place, you know, just like not worrying about finally just chilling out.
09:11 And I really happened to be home so long with my wife and my daughter and everything.
09:15 But then it caught up with me. It caught up with me.
09:20 And I suddenly – when we started the national, we were sort of like, "Okay, we have to start to think about how to get back out there and everything."
09:27 And I couldn't start writing.
09:30 So Nick Cave always talks about there's this little flame, you know, in many of the things that – that's this like you're just trying to find that weird little flame that gets you excited about anything emotional thing, whether it's a movie or a song or anything.
09:47 And I couldn't find – it was like so long, I couldn't find it at all.
09:51 You know, I was like I could not find the flame. I couldn't light it. I couldn't – like wandering around.
09:57 And I just didn't know if it was ever coming back.
09:59 So that was – triggered a panic, you know.
10:02 And so when we started finally putting songs together, that ended up being first two pages of Frankenstein.
10:09 It was just – that was like slowly that flicker started – that flicker, that candle, that little flame came back.
10:17 And now I just keep – I keep throwing this gasoline on the whole thing and just trying to light the whole house up and keep it going for as long as possible.
10:27 Yeah, no, because I remember when we spoke about Serpentine Prison and we talked about the trachodiri and the meaning of that lyric, "Paralysis has me."
10:34 Yeah.
10:35 And then I've seen you use that word a lot to describe that period.
10:38 Yeah. The Serpentine Prison record, there's so much foreshadowing of what was about to happen to me in that record.
10:46 And, you know, and I was writing – a lot of that stuff with a lot of people I was writing with were a lot of people that had been cooking the TV show with, like, Walter Martin and Matt Baric from Walkman and Mike Brewer.
11:00 And so I was writing all these songs with people because I wanted the TV show to have a real band with a real catalog and stuff.
11:10 And then when the TV show was, you know, maybe not happening, we had to put it out.
11:14 So there's all that kind of material. There's a bunch more of that kind of stuff.
11:18 And so – but everything, you know, I had to put it all down. I had to walk away from everything.
11:22 I had to call so many people and just say, like, "I can't, you know, I can't do this anymore."
11:27 I just – I couldn't string people along anymore if I wasn't sure they were going to happen, any of these things were going to happen.
11:34 And I, you know, I felt like a need to put it all down because I think I was burned out, you know.
11:40 Yeah. Because you must have never had that feeling of reawakening before with, like, people being there for you and bringing – like, that – the flame coming back.
11:48 That must have felt like quite a profound sensation. "Oh, shit, I can do this."
11:51 This kind of level of, like, a long period of depression or just, like, just not being able to get excited about anything.
11:59 And that was when I was 12, you know. And I remembered – I was like, "This is as bad as it was when I was 12."
12:05 And I kept trying to think, "What is it? Like, what was going on when I was 12 that's so similar to what's going on now?"
12:11 You know, and I couldn't – there's nothing I could identify necessarily.
12:14 But I remember that lasting for, like, a year. And it was – it was just – it was time, mostly, you know, that I think just finally – and reconnecting and just getting back out there and really reconnecting with the band and just, like – I think it was – it was – I don't know.
12:32 It felt like a real – a real physical – my body – everything needed to shut down for a while, you know, and reboot from nothing.
12:39 And it did, you know. But it was – it took a long time for that light to come back on, you know.
12:46 And it was a slow, slow process of coming out of it.
12:50 And I, you know, adventured into various antidepressants and quit smoking weed and drinking alcohol for a while.
13:01 None of that really helped, to be honest, you know. It was like – it was – it was – the antidepressants, like, raised the floor a little bit when it was really bad.
13:09 But it was – I got off of it pretty quick. And then having a – you know, smoking a joint and having a glass of wine with the band, you know, while we're listening back to something that's kind of working was – was the – the way back to it.
13:24 So – or just, you know, all of that. So, yeah, I tried to reboot myself physically and mentally and everything and kind of had to.
13:33 I mean, there was – it was – it was – everything kind of burned down.
13:37 My brain burned to the – burned to the ashes. And it was just kind of hit to slowly rebuild it up, you know, somehow.
13:43 Yeah.
13:44 But, yeah, it was – it was – it was sobering to realize how fragile I was, I think.
13:51 That was the – like, looking back, I was like, wow, I was sick as hell.
13:54 You know, just like physically. It was – it was a whole physical thing, you know.
13:58 And it was triggered by real things and mental things and whatever.
14:02 But it was like – it was a physical – you know, total – total emotional, physical paralysis and stuff.
14:09 So I've learned to just respect it, you know, and respect how fragile everyone is.
14:18 So was it a relief when Frankenstein was done and you could see all your babies laid out and be like –
14:25 It was a relief that we were able to – to – to, you know, finish a record.
14:31 And then – but then there were more – there were more things happening.
14:33 But we had to – you know, it was kind of like we had to put that record out because we had to tour.
14:37 Because we had, you know, 40 out-of-work people for many years at this point who were desperate.
14:43 And we were all desperate.
14:44 You know, we have to get this family and this – this thing that we built back out there.
14:49 We have to put the ship back out into the ocean.
14:52 And – and we needed to have a – you know, so there was – it was – in the first many shows,
14:58 even there's a – there's a show we did in Bearsville, you know, I was – I was, you know,
15:04 barely able to sort of do – do that kind of thing at that point.
15:07 And the record was pretty – it was done.
15:10 But it – yeah, it was still months before I – I – I, you know, got back into sort of mental and – and whatever, emotional shape.
15:21 You know. I'm not in that great a physical shape, but I – you know, I'm in – everything else is – is much more –
15:27 I saw you sprint through the crowd last night. I thought you had some moves.
15:29 Yeah. Clamor. Yeah.
15:33 I don't – I don't – I don't sprightly go over the barrier like I used to.
15:37 No flips.
15:38 Yeah. I – thankfully, I have helpful fans that like to, you know, drag me around and stuff.
15:44 So, yeah. Yeah. But everything – everything – the whole band feels really kind of – everybody's having a – having a great time, you know.
15:52 And – and feeling – feeling great artistically, feeling great physically, live and everything.
15:59 And – and we're kind of on a – on a really, I don't know, juicy phase or something.
16:06 Juicy phase.
16:07 Keep – keep writing and stuff. So, I think we're going to like – we're going to take our time and – and just have fun with this, you know.
16:14 And keep touring and keep writing and, you know, we don't have any massive plan right now or direction.
16:21 We're just like, yeah, yeah, we can kind of do whatever we want now. I think everybody feels that, so.
16:27 Well, we spoke a few times in the past about how you'd use weed and wine as a crutch to get on stage and help you connect to the songs and shut everything off.
16:34 But I was wondering with this kind of newfound compulsion and sort of need for The National to exist,
16:40 there's like – do you connect differently to the songs and the band and the audience at the moment now that –
16:45 I mean – I mean, I really – I mean, by – by playing so many different songs every night and having so many different songs, it's every song.
16:53 And I would always try to actually pay attention mostly to the song, not to the crowd, not to the – not to anything.
17:00 Just – just try to pay attention to the song, remember the lyrics, and – and – and try to actually connect to the lyrics.
17:08 That – that was the – that was the most I could ever do. And I had to do that from the very first days.
17:16 Like, because I was terrified to look at – even if there were two people or one people, no one.
17:19 It was – I – to make eye contact with a crowd would throw me off and I would get so – so – but I've – I've kind of learned to take in the crowd – look at the crowd.
17:29 And then I – because I have, you know, a safety net, if I have to go – like Nick – I always refer to Nick Cave because he's my hero.
17:36 He's probably in one of these books.
17:37 He's probably – he's my publicist.
17:40 Hanging upside down.
17:41 But – but I mean, he – he – when he runs over and he needs to look at his binder, he does that, you know. And it's like – it's great.
17:46 So I – I kind of like – that all freed me to – to just really, really listen to the songs and enjoy the – the – the music or enjoy Brian and enjoy the crowd and enjoy the – my own lyrics, you know.
17:59 And – and – and – and yeah. So yeah. And I smoke a little bit of weed and I – and I kind of sip a cocktail throughout the show just, you know, in a – but, you know, nothing before and nothing after.
18:10 I'm kind of like – well, like, it's – it's just a – it's just a little bit of, you know, grease – grease on the track or something for the – for the – for these shows.
18:19 And – and it's – I don't even – I've been having a great time.
18:23 I've been – I've been just, I don't know, connecting with all of it, the whole room, the whole – the front row, the back row, the, you know, the lighting guys and everybody, you know.
18:35 It's all feels like – it's been fun to figure out how to make these big, weird rooms – the whole thing is a playground, you know.
18:45 Like, I go out all the time and I don't – I don't body surf. I just – it's fun to just see where the stairwells are, you know.
18:52 I go out and I find closets and exits and – and just to see what's out there, you know, and then come back in and it's – it's fun to wander through.
19:02 And I stay – I keep the cord. I don't have a wireless mic. People always ask me, like, why don't you have a wireless – wireless mic?
19:11 And the truth is I just think they look stupid.
19:13 Well, it didn't really take my hat off last night.
19:15 I don't know why. They look stupid to me.
19:17 And even though everybody getting strangled by this – my mic cord is – is arguably much more stupid looking.
19:26 But, yeah, no, I also just find my way back with it, you know.
19:30 Yeah. When you get a Britney Spears headset, is there a name for them?
19:34 Yeah, no, I could get one of those. Those are cool. I have often one of – like, just so I could kind of run around.
19:39 But, yeah, then I would have – literally have nothing to do with my hands, you know.
19:43 It's just – it's taken me forever to figure out what to do with, like, a microphone without looking like Phil Donahue or something, you know.
19:49 It's like –
19:50 It's one of those things, like, when you're on a dance floor without a drink in your hand, you're like, what do I do?
19:55 Yeah, no, yeah, yeah. I used to – I used to have a cigarette, a drink and the microphone.
20:01 Like, you know, just – like, I just had these, you know, saying, you know.
20:05 It was all three of them at the same time.
20:08 But, yeah, now I've kind of – I don't know. I don't think about what my hands are doing as much.
20:14 I probably – maybe I should.
20:16 So was Laugh Track always on the horizon or was it kind of born of this joy of being back on the road in many ways?
20:22 It was always – I mean, there was – when we were writing, when we first started, like, writing and – I mean, Aaron and Bryce and those guys had all sent me lots and lots of music, you know.
20:37 And I had been sitting on it for at least a year, you know, more.
20:42 And so a lot of the things that are across both of these things are from that long phase where they all were very prolific and I was – you know, I couldn't do anything.
20:57 I couldn't even text myself, you know.
20:59 And I slowly – like, all those we started cooking around the same time and we just had a lot of them.
21:06 And so the first two pages of Frankenstein – frankly, the first ones that we thought, okay – I was like, okay, that one – those are done, you know.
21:17 It's like Weird Goodbyes was the first one.
21:19 And we put that out – like, the first time – I was like, that song's done.
21:23 And we put it out just to – we were like, you know, it was like, finally, finally, there's – we finished a new song.
21:29 And that was like – meant a lot to me.
21:32 And then the rest of the – the songs in that were like – as they – you know, they kind of all sort of started being finished.
21:41 And there were like a lot of them.
21:43 Those first 11 or whatever, I was like – we were like, okay, let's put it out, you know.
21:48 And I curated that.
21:50 I kept a lot of stuff back.
21:52 It was my idea to not put Weird Goodbyes in that batch and stuff.
21:57 And yeah, but then the other ones all kept sort of growing.
22:02 And then a few new things came up, you know.
22:05 And so it was – but I definitely – these two records definitely feel one phase, one journey for us, you know.
22:16 Definitely for me, you know.
22:18 Yeah, and I kind of, you know, dug into every little – after not wanting to look or think or write about anything that I had been going through for so long,
22:31 finally I started writing about it all.
22:33 And I, you know, I hope I don't write about depression for a while or all that kind of – because I feel like I – yeah, I kind of turned over every leaf and looked in every corner there.
22:44 And yeah, and there's a lot on there.
22:46 But it all feels – it's all very connected to me.
22:51 I wanted them to both have essentially the same cover and all that kind of stuff.
22:56 Yeah. Well, a lot's been said about people saying that kind of Frankenstein feels kind of like Zero Hour and Laff Trak feels a bit more kind of like Rising From the Ashes.
23:04 Do you think that's fair? Is that just in the energy of it?
23:07 No, I think Frankenstein – from Frankenstein to – it's not necessarily chronological, but like knowing how we made this batch of 20-something songs, you know.
23:20 And there's others that we just – that are – there are B-sides for all this stuff and different things that we did abandon.
23:28 But yeah, all of them very much feel like they are all woven into a big, you know, some sort of tapestry for me.
23:40 And it's not necessarily chronological, but, you know, just – I mean, just even the fact, you know, the – you can hear my voice on so many of the songs that, you know, I was barely – almost barely making any noise, you know.
23:54 So, like, physically – physically you see the band sort of like kind of coming out of a long, you know, mutation or something and, you know, just sprouting slowly back to life, I think, for sure.
24:11 Yeah, I hear that across the whole record a lot, yeah.
24:14 Yeah. And I was going to ask about collaborators.
24:16 Obviously, since I Am Easy to Find, you've kind of been a bit more open to having other voices on the tracks.
24:22 And I was just wondering what it was like to have these people like Taylor Swift, Phoebe Reuters, Roseanne O'Kash.
24:27 What's it like to have them inhabit the songs with you? Is that –
24:29 I mean, it's always – I mean, it's always incredible.
24:32 There is – there are certain songs where, like, the one with Rose, Kash, is – I just had always – I was writing and thinking about hopefully getting her on it.
24:43 And I had become friends with her, you know, a grateful connection of another way.
24:48 And she was one of these people that I did talk to, very few people I talked to, in the middle of my kind of shutdown period.
24:56 And she was actually – was very helpful in turning – like, flicking that candle back on for me.
25:03 She said a few things to me.
25:05 But – so I couldn't wait to – once we were back, to bring her in on something.
25:08 So that was very specific.
25:10 And then with, like, Phoebe, like, we had these three songs, including "Laugh Track," which is on the new one.
25:18 And I really wanted her to – I really heard her on "Laugh Track."
25:22 And I just – it needed that voice of my wife.
25:26 My wife, you know, was – you know, that song's, you know, asking somebody just to, like, tell me it's all going to be OK, you know.
25:34 Or at least fake it for me.
25:36 You know, help me fake it, you know.
25:38 And that was – I was – needed my wife – you know, so that song was kind of written.
25:42 So it needed that – just comforting – comforting somehow – something about the gentleness of Phoebe's delivery of, like, sometimes un-gentle thoughts or awkward thoughts was going to be perfect for that.
26:03 And Erin really wanted to see what she would do with "Your Mind Is Not Your Friend" and "This Isn't Helping."
26:13 And she just sang on all of them, you know.
26:16 And so we can't really which ones, but just what do you do with all those riches of beautiful voices.
26:21 And then the Taylor thing was super organic and – because Erin had – we'd known her for a long time.
26:28 And Erin, obviously, had been doing so much amazing stuff with her.
26:31 And I wrote the song "The Alcott," again, with Corinne in mind, you know, the writing and the book – notebook and stuff.
26:41 And then Erin sent it to Taylor, and then she kind of added this other perspective on it and wrote all her parts to it.
26:47 So that was different, where it was, like, she – a true duet where she heard that and kind of, like, inhabited the character that I was singing about, which is almost always Corinne, you know.
26:59 And so that was amazing for that to work.
27:03 So all those things have been – and then Justin and Sufjan and everybody, Lisa Hannigan, who we work with.
27:09 And we've had so many people who've just – we've been just so lucky that they dive in and, you know, that kind of thing.
27:18 So I don't know. It's not really a strategic game.
27:22 Of course, we knew that, like, Taylor Swift – I mean, Erin's worked with Taylor Swift. It's going to bring a different kind of, whatever, spotlight or something.
27:33 I don't even know. But it's been fun. It's been cool. I love it.
27:36 You know, it's like – yeah. All that thing is – all of that has been a really healthy branching out of – for everybody doing all these different things.
27:46 Yeah.
27:48 Any surprises that have come with that spotlight of being brought into the Taylor Swift orbit? Or has life not provided you with any surprises?
27:54 No major surprises. No, it was good. I get we're getting a lot of friendship bracelets.
27:57 I mean, honestly, I do think – I think the biggest thing – I know that I – what I see Taylor Swift is her incredible generosity to her fans and people who love her.
28:12 And she makes such a joyous event and a fun event. I was up till midnight with my daughter and her friends waiting for midnight.
28:20 And all that stuff – she makes an absolute event out of a record, out of a work of art.
28:30 And, like, who – that hardly ever happens anymore. Like, the Beatles would pull that off.
28:35 And I just – I'm absolutely in awe of her ability to just bring so much excitement and joy to so many people.
28:45 And it's in my home, you know. And I love it. And so, yeah. I think – so the national – like, part of our commitment to, like, putting on great shows, I think, is, like, yeah.
28:55 That's what really matters. The whole thing – these, you know, these nights, these moments you spend with strangers singing together and, like, how magical and strange and incredible that is. Yeah.
29:07 And you described the era of these two records as shedding a skin. So I just wondered if – does that mean end of a chapter? Do you have much – have you thought about what comes next?
29:16 I think so. I mean, I think it feels like with "I Am Easy to Find," where working with Mike Mills and kind of, you know, working with so many other voices, particularly because it called for that,
29:28 because it was a story about a woman and her mother and all these – it needed other voices. Literally, you know, my wife was writing a lot on that, too.
29:37 And then – and so that kind of – you know, we've gone through a long phase of, like, having – working with a lot of other singers, a lot of voices and stuff like that.
29:46 And I do feel like these three records – "I Am Easy to Find" through "Laugh Track," "Frankenstein" and "Laugh Track" are kind of – they feel all – even though there was a big separation in the middle,
29:59 they seem artistically very connected. But I do feel we were kind of, like, done with those branches, a lot of those branches. You know, I think it's time to grow out the other side of the tree, in whatever that means.
30:14 Brian told me he wanted you guys to make a full-on punk record instead of Irish.
30:18 Everybody says that, you know. And, like, I would love to – I mean, honestly, it's like, if I can't – if I'm not in a mode where I can, like, write – I mean, those guys send me stuff that's rock songs all the time, but, like, I have to be there. I can't fake that.
30:30 Yeah.
30:31 I can't fake a rock song. Everybody can, like, can hear a fake rock song from – you know, that's, like – it just sounds so pathetic and effortful. And so I can't do that. I can't fake it. I've got to actually be in the zone and feeling it.
30:43 And, yeah, and so, you know, that started to happen more. But, like, when I was, you know, when I was in the phase, I wasn't angry at anything, you know. I couldn't muster the energy. I was – you know, I could – I couldn't raise my voice above a whisper.
31:02 I mean, there are even songs that are, like, aggressive musically, sonically aggressive, where I'm just, like, mumbling, you know. And because that – you know, I can't go in – I don't, like, warm my voice up and go in and try to build out a hit rocker, you know. It's like it's impossible. You can't do it. I don't know.
31:21 So everything has to just be organic with us. Yeah, which is – thank God, you know. I wouldn't know how to start if I had to cook up a song, you know, from a strategic recipe perspective, you know, in terms of, like, career arc or, you know, anything like that. I just – it's whatever is going on, I have to write that, you know.
31:46 And in that spirit, is the sitcom still coming or is that –
31:48 It's not unlike Frankenstein. It is – it had a jolt of a lightning bolt. It started its heart again. No, it's a really good – it's a really great show. And we kind of had to put the – with the – it's called Doss Apes. And with the pandemic, we had to put it down because I was – but yeah, Doss Apes is alive, and that's all I can say.
32:11 But I don't – it's one of those things. It's like TV show – like, there was nothing to happen because of the writer's strikes and stuff like that. But we'll see. I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to let – I'm not going to drown in projects like I was before, you know. I'm going to make sure I only take on the things that I can really, really do. But that is one of them that I really want to do still and that might happen, so.
32:36 Is it still autobiographical or –
32:38 It's a lot of details from autobiographical things. But not just mine. Also, like, you know, Walt Martin and Matt Baric from Walkman have all kinds of stories. And also, the story of the band, it's only like one part of it. Tom, my brother, is, you know, essentially is the hero in everything.
33:01 And Tom and I play ourselves, but my wife isn't even, you know – so that's all – but it's – the whole chemistry and the sort of DNA of the show is very different than anything I think that exists. And it's really cool. I really like it. And it's joyful. And it's, you know – I guess it's a funny show.
33:24 Mistaken for Strangers, the doc that Corinne and Tom and I made, you know, captures the spirit of this television show, but it's not going to be like a fake doc or anything like that. So, anyway, I don't know. It might not be anything. It might just be on our laptops, you know, forever. You know, who knows?
33:44 Well, fingers crossed. Looking forward to it. Matt, thank you for joining us in our five-star dystopia.
33:48 Yeah.
33:49 Thanks.
33:51 Thanks.
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