Frankenstein Laughs

ISSUE #256

The National put out their second album of 2023 last week, a companion to this spring’s First Two Pages of Frankenstein. The record is called Laugh Track, and right down to the guest stars, Swiftie production sound, and variant album cover, this feels like Frankenstein’s twin brother.

Which, like all dual-album releases, begs the question: why wasn’t this cut down to one album instead? A lot of the tracks sound way too similar, with far too many piano ballads and far too little bone-snapping drumming. Cut out all the filler and this could’ve been an AOTY contender.

All this was put forth by Steven Hyden in his weekly Indie Mixtape, and he took it on himself to piece together a National über-album—which he calls Frankenstein Laughs—from the brightest parts of both. Hyden, a critic I’ve been reading for over ten years and recently started listening to 24/7 on Indiecast, takes the time to explain his reasoning behind each track, and early in his piece he summarized how I feel about The National these days:

When I saw The National on tour in 2022, I was thrilled by the early previews of their latest material. The songs were propulsive and guitar-heavy, reiterating a core truth about this band: On the concert stage, they transcend the bookish reputation their records have earned them, injecting their songs with the energy and spirit of a proper rock ‘n’ roll outfit. (“You need to see them live” is a stereotypical rejoinder to criticism of any band, but it really is true for The National.) When Bryce Dessner told me that they were incorporating live recordings into the studio versions on their upcoming album, I was doubly psyched. It seemed like precisely the right direction to take after I Am Easy To Find.

You can hear some of that in the best songs spread across their twin 2023 records, particularly “Smoke Detector” and “Eucalyptus” from Frankenstein. But unlike their live show, The National on record has a frustrating habit of killing their own momentum.

This week’s playlist features Hyden’s supercut, and I do think he got it right. If only I could vote for this as The National’s 2023 album instead of splitting my best album list between the two soggier ones we got.

---