Let’s play a game! Which one of these is not like the others?
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[5.78]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Matt Berninger drawls his way through a series of past travails in a fading New York, Cohen-esque and gorgeously glum. As hypnotic as his baritone remains, The National would not be the band they are without the attention to detail in their music, and “Demons” has more going on in the background than on the first listen: that fuzzy skip that tips over the guitar delay, the subdued horns, the complex drum patterns shifting as the song plays on. They turn Berninger’s closed-in narration into a story, complementing the emotional power of his words without tipping into mawkishness. It is small-scale and elegant, gigantic and open-hearted; a sketch with the colour of a portrait.
[8]
Alfred Soto: Mumbling and fussing through another decade because nothing’s changed since the last one, Matt Berninger frets, fusses, but — as per the glories and limits of his baritone — doesn’t sulk. Drums roll, pianos tinkle, and a mournful horn reminds him he’s secretly in love with everyone in his childhood. I suppose this keeps him up nights more than the thought of alligators in sewers and buzzards in the sky. The woes of a Wells Fargo teller who coulda been a hedge fund manager need articulation, but figurative language can take you only so far.
[6]
Patrick St. Michel: One of The National’s greatest charms is Matt Berninger sounding perpetually tipsy, like he’s had a few spiked lemonades too many: a bit vulnerable about his feelings but not enough to lose his sense of humor. “Demons” is one drink too far, Berninger sounding more solemn and blunt (“I stay down/with my demons”) than usual. He sneaks in some of his usual sloshed creativity — a few lyrics about alligators, and the line “I’m secretly in love/with everyone I grew up with,” which is the sort of thing only he can pull off — but this is a tad too direct.
[6]
Anthony Easton: Sounds buried and sort of exhausted, and there is a chugging sameness to some of it — and I’m not really opposed to that.
[5]
Brad Shoup: It’s got the same mud-stuck groove as Alive ‘N Kickin’s “Tighter, Tighter”. And Matt National’s still roaming Cohen’s vocal ground. The invocation of demons means nothing to me, nothing past AA talk and blog obituaries. Coldplay — also skilled at mopefests that refuse catharsis — gave us “Everything’s Not Lost” on their debut, and either by cunning or lucky incompetence introduced the idea of a sorting machine for good and bad demons. It’s about the only non-metal way to approach the subject. Oh, whoops — that song was cathartic, and one of their best cuts.
[4]
Mallory O’Donnell: I love a dark production, and I’m down with demons. But this is murky to the point of being muddled — anything interesting about the (admittedly slight) tune has been swallowed up by digital doom and gloom.
[4]
Jer Fairall: I like just enough of The National’s songs to assume that the reason I don’t like more of them must have something to do with Matt Berninger’s somnambulistic, more-Mark-Eitzel-than-Mark-Eitzel vocals putting too fine a point on the miserablism of the music and lyrics. “Demons,” though, finds what is, for me, the ideal setting (if hardly the hippest) for one of Berninger’s mopes in the kind of graceful soft rock shimmer that might have accompanied a Howard Jones or Bruce Hornsby ballad once upon a time. Between this and Dawn Richard, nostalgia for 1986 is one recent cultural movement I can completely get behind.
[7]
Scott Mildenhall: The man from The National doesn’t sound best pleased, like someone with no hope of finding any answers. Certainly there aren’t any here, something underlined by how the final line only reiterates his compromise with misery, and how after that, there’s nothing. No soothing coda incorporating the strings that built up to it, just a drop into a void.
[7]
Britt Alderfer: I suppose it makes sense for Matt Berninger to sound so exhausted. “I’ve been kept up for days,” he sings in a voice scarcely above a mumble. He sounds like he has been watching the world through a scrim, and I can attest that insomnia is actually like that. Objects appear oddly bright and further away and you don’t have the energy to reach them. Berninger has sounded exhausted before — with repetitive and numbing mundane daily responsibilities, strained adult relationships, and feeling totally isolated even while living in a city with millions of other people — but as a band The National usually work through said exhaustion in a way that turns into group catharsis for them and listeners. You are offered comfort in the fact that these pockets of isolation exist in other people, too. But The National’s best tracks (“Fake Empire”, “Conversation 16”, “Secret Meeting”, for starters) build up like a lump in your throat, and when you finally swallow by the end, there’s some relief with the memory of the discomfort. While not godawful by any means, “Demons” feels like something we’ve heard before, but now with a little more distance and a little less energy.
[5]