Brooklyn based band ‘The National’ are over in the UK for some much anticipated shows following the release of one of this year’s more exciting albums ‘Trouble Will Find Me.’ The opportunity to see them in the UK was too much to resist, so it was onwards and upwards to Manchester’s Apollo.

I’m always fascinated by a contrasting crowd, and Monday night’s ‘mixed bag’ was no exception. The Apollo was packed out with sixth formers, twenty-somethings, those who had come straight from the office, plenty of silver haired types and the guy who still owed money, to the money, to the money he owed. The queue for the cloakroom was as long as the bar itself, as practicality was matching the need for over-priced Tuborg from a plastic cup stride for stride.

Come 9pm, the main attraction came on stage to rapturous applause and they were straight into some of their new material – opening with ‘Sea of Love.’ Three, four, five, tracks played and not so much as a ‘Hello Manchester’ or ‘We are the National, thanks for coming’ had been uttered – it was all beginning to seem a bit impersonal. Then ahead of their sixth track, following the applause from what had preceded it, frontman Matt Berninger gave us a bit of speech ‘OK, sshhhhh.’

Most were quite amused by this, the standard of their performance was more than good enough to cover any lack of spoken interaction. It’s significant to point out that Berninger had his game face on. He paced up and down like Homeland’s Carrie Mathieson off her meds. He prowled around HIS stage, playing with his beard and staying with the emotion of his songs.

He routinely banged the microphone against his own head. Two thirds of the way into the performance they played ‘Conversation 16’. By the point that Berninger sung ‘I was afraid, I’d eat your brains’ you started to doubt that this was a metaphor at all, you believed him.

The last third of the performance was much different. The whole band became more chatty. It was announced that Kyle, one of their trumpet players wasn’t present as he’d flown back to Buffalo as his Wife was having a baby. ‘Awwww.’ Said the crowd whilst they also announced they were happy to be back in Manchester for the first time since 2006. The vast majority of the audience wouldn’t have been familiar with their work in 2006 , and their set list was evidence of this. The bulk of what they played was from their most recent two albums ‘High Violet and ‘Trouble Will Find Me.’

As the gig was drawing to a close The National belted out one of their older records from their third album ‘Aligator’. Matt Beringer was off the stage and parading amongst the crowd performing a quite superb –Mr November. The soundmen were desperately keeping hold of microphone wire as they followed the enigmatic frontman’s movements throughout the adoring Manchester crowd. Eventually they fished him back to the sanctuary shore of the stage where they then played the opening track from High Violet ‘Terrible Love’.

They concluded their encore with an acoustic performance of ‘Vanderlylle Crybaby’. All of the band gathered around three microphones at the front of the stage as they delivered their closing contribution to a fine set. All of the while encouraging the crowd to join in. After an initial feeling of coldness in the early stages, the crowd were made to feel very much a part of the show in the latter stages. Berninger is a fascinating frontman, who you simply can’t take your eyes off. Anyone who left before the encore truly missed out.

Alan Roberts

@kopiteal