{"id":20692,"date":"2014-03-09T10:04:27","date_gmt":"2014-03-09T18:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/?p=20692"},"modified":"2014-03-09T10:10:27","modified_gmt":"2014-03-09T18:10:27","slug":"watch-the-national-perform-on-saturday-night-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelefortreport.com\/blog\/2014-03\/watch-the-national-perform-on-saturday-night-live\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch The National Perform on Saturday Night Live"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"the-national\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As hard as it is to believe, America’s best live band, The National<\/strong>, made their first appearance on SNL<\/strong> last night (they have been leading indie-rock and have lived for a decade just across the river in Brooklyn ferheavensake).\u00a0 Check out their standard, scintillating performances below on Graceless<\/strong><\/em> and I Need My Girl<\/strong><\/em> from our Best Album of 2013<\/strong><\/a>, Trouble Will Find Me<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 In addition to some of the best lyrics written in the past year, Graceless<\/strong> <\/em>features the Dessner twins’<\/strong> ferocious wall-of-guitar attack to go with Matt Berninger’s<\/strong> emotional, graceless vocal.\u00a0 In contrast I Need My Girl<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>is appropriately sedate (following Aaron Dessner’s<\/strong> opening headstock-smash guitar effects).\u00a0 The song is driven by the magnificent, mesmerizingly-metronomic drumming of Bryan Devendorf<\/strong>, which perfectly frames Berninger’s<\/strong> vocals and allows the song’s lyrics to rightly take center stage.<\/p>\n

The National<\/strong> play the Santa Barbara Bowl<\/strong> on April 25th and tickets are still available HERE<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a bonus, check out a particularly-affecting and effective acoustic (with horns) version of the latter song that we featured last October<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Graceless<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n