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Forbes
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Sunday Conversation: The National's Matt Berninger On His New Solo Album
How to describe an interview with The National frontman Matt Berninger? Like talking to Moby or Liz Phair (who along with Robert Plant might be the smartest interview in music) it is a fascinating labyrinth of cerebral twists and turns where you just hold on and do your best to keep up. It is as compelling and enlightening as his music. Which is saying a lot because along with Nick Cave and the timeless Bruce Springsteen, Berninger, with The National and on his own, has been, to me, the most consistent rock act in the first quarter of this century. Once again, Berninger stuns with his second solo album, Get Sunk. A gorgeous slice of life that, like the writing of Raymond Carver, is deceptively complex and profound, Get Sunk is, as Berninger describes it, a romance with ghosts. As we discussed, it is a record of memories, of life, of hope. Steve Baltin: I'm a big believer in environment affecting writing. So, was it Connecticut that lit the spark for this album? Matt Berninger: The Connecticut part of it maybe colored the process. This record has a lot of Midwestern atmosphere with creeks and trees and animals and bike rides along rivers and stuff. I've always been writing about that stuff. But yeah, getting to Connecticut, back in an area that is like what it was like in my youth and particularly on my uncle's farm. The place I live now, I have a barn, and I have a little bit of land. But I have all this stuff and there are trails in the woods and creeks all around where I live now. And that's where I spent all my most memorable stuff of my childhood, it all happened at that farm in Indiana. So, Connecticut really inspired that part of it. But I think anytime you uproot and go to a new place, or take a vacation, you're riding a train through Italy, like suddenly, you're going to write differently and be inspired to write different kinds of stories. So, I do think, I think changing the soil you're in every 10 years is really smart. Baltin: So that's something that you've done regularly, move every decade or so? Berninger: Yeah, I've moved from Cincinnati, moving out of your house or your parents' house, and then going to college in an apartment, that feels like two different types of living. Then I moved to New York City in '96, and I was there for maybe 15 years, and that's where I met my wife, that's where my daughter was born. We'd been in Brooklyn for close to 15 years or something. Then we just felt we had squeezed New York for every drop of inspiration and so we moved to Venice, California. We lived out there for 10 years and then I wrote five or six, seven records, did so much stuff out there and met Mike Mills and became a collaborator with all these amazing filmmakers and stuff. So that was an amazing decade of creativity and then my daughter was about to go to high school, and we all wanted something new, and we had family in Connecticut and it's so close to New York. I didn't want to move back to Brooklyn, but I really want to be close to New York again. I go to New York every week and ride the train. So yeah, it's really new and inspiring and I think that is really good and it does jolt me, although some of this record I started five years ago in Venice. Even some of the songs that are talking about Indiana, and the Midwestern pastoral scenes were written when I still lived in Venice during the lockdown. So maybe I was just dreaming of wandering the woods or going back to a time. But I always write about that stuff. But moving and changing your environment does change your brain. Baltin: Would this album have been made anywhere now at this time? Berninger: Yeah, I feel like this would have been made anywhere at this point in time. I do, and I have been saying this recently because I've been trying to answer that question. Because yeah, a lot of this record does go back and it's a really conscious effort to try to reshape, not in the details and truth, but in the emotional memories of things and write a great story, and of a great 45-minute immersive connected experience. And it was really important for me on this record more than anything I've ever done, I think. But you're right, what is our past? What is it? And often, I've been saying this, that our past is a story we tell ourselves. and we remember it differently. Our memories of it change and our memories are memories of memories. So, it's our own version of (the game) telephone constantly going as we go and try to retell the stories of what happened and why am I like this and what was my childhood like and what were my relationships with my parents like and what was it? It's all fantasy and it's just the same way your future is a story you're telling yourself. What you want, why you're doing what you're doing and where you're trying to go and how long you want to live and what you want in your life and what experiences you want to have going forward is also just a story. And what experiences you had in the past so you're just telling your story of those experiences. All those things, traumas, good things, can totally shape you, yes, but sometimes we can be confined by our own definitions of ourselves and that we create a little bit of a prison or a trap around ourselves and we say, 'I'm this way because of this and that's why and I'm going to stay this way.' And right now you're seeing in the world, everybody, it's an identity crisis. People don't know. I'm a Catholic, but there are so many Catholics identifying with something else that is so un -Catholic. And that kind of thing, but there's so much, 'But this is me now, I'm this and I identify with this.' I think we really trap ourselves into our ideas of who exactly we are and I think it's a dangerous thing. I was trapped in an idea of what I was. Like I was this type of guy. I'd written all these stories. I had manifested becoming this melodramatic, unhinged character. And then I was leaking into that facade or that story I had told had started to become a little real. And it wasn't real. And so, yeah, I think that this record is trying to maybe go back and kind of recontextualize some of the beauty and I think the good things mostly. There's a lot of darkness in this record, but I'm a happy person. I've had very unhappy times. I've had very dark, long depressions. Everyone has, but my core is optimistic, hopeful, kind, brave, and happy mostly, and I remember that. And I learned that from my parents. I learned that from my cousins. I learned that from my uncle. I learned that from nature. I learned that from the farm. I learned that early, and that hasn't changed. I identify as those things, but sometimes you get lost in these other prisons of other things that you think you are, but you're not. Baltin: That's so interesting on so many levels. As The National started getting bigger, do you feel like personally you became a character people wanted you to be? Berninger: I was actually in my early 30s before we got successful. But when you get your first taste of success and people are really reacting to your work that is some of the most extreme, darkest parts of your personality, or the saddest parts, and those become the best songs because I'm being honest about something. But when you're writing those songs in your 30s, and then you get successful, I'm sure subconsciously I've elevated that idea of that guy in my head. There's more currency to that character, I realize. And so maybe you start to manifest it, and you keep building this weird sculpture of these little Legos of melodrama and anger or rock and roll songs and all these things. Then they become this really weird cool sculpture that everybody buys tickets to see. And then the next thing you know, you're stuck as this thing that wasn't what you intended. Baltin: You and I have talked over the years too about literature being inspiring and I feel like there were very literary and cinematic points of this album. Right when we got on the Zoom, I was listening to the record again. I love 'Silver Jeep.' That one has almost like a Raymond Carver feeling to me. Berninger: Yeah, there's a few of them. Some of them are more kind of blurry, abstract, impressionistic, emotional descriptions of emotional things or descriptions of process, like 'Nowhere Special' is a totally different song from a lot of the other songs and so is "End of the Notion.' I don't think about it when I go in but I see that I'm often trying to write a type of song I've never written but I've written hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of songs. But "Silver Jeep" and "Bonnet of Pins" and "Frozen Oranges," those are three examples of songs that are like scenes. Or "Bonnet of Pins" is maybe just an hour or a couple of hours of reconnection between two people. Then "Frozen Oranges" is a whole day, a long bike ride filled with medicines and joys and fruit and sunshine and bugs and juice and it's a really healthy song. Then 'Silver Jeep' is a is an echo of the same character from 'Bonnet of Pins.' That character is not really present much in 'Frozen Oranges.' But then at the end of the record, I think 'Silver Jeep' and 'Bonnet of Pins' are a little bit of a return to that relationship or that dynamic. What is it? Well, they're always chasing each other. They're always seeking each other, but they're always there. The line in 'Silver Jeep' that I like is, 'I see you out there somewhere in a silver jeep.' Maybe only in my mind but you'll always be there whether I ever see you in person again, you're never leaving. This person might already be dead. The whole record is about a ghost but it's not a singular ghost, it's not one person, it's a ghost of something. It's a really romantic record. It's a romance with a ghost, I guess.
Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Amsterdam's anarchic new five-star hotel
Inside the Rosewood Amsterdam, which opened at the beginning of May after a decade-long transformation, there are spliffs for sale in a vending machine, and I passed by Johnny Rotten on the landing. Nick Cave and Kate Bush I spotted in the bar. For clarity, though, the spliffs were made of ceramic by the artist Casper Braat, and the musicians are photographic portraits by Anton Corbijn. This new Rosewood likes to wear its art on its sleeve — in fact, it's almost as much of a gallery as a hotel. From the outside, it would be easy to mistake it for another of the city's museums. It's set in the former Palace of Justice, in a building dating back to 1665, and its neoclassical bulk stretches out over almost a block along the central Prinsengracht canal. Most of the group's hotels are in legacy landmark buildings: a former bank in Munich, for instance. In London there's an Edwardian pile in Holborn and, this autumn, there will also be the former US Embassy. Compared to the easygoing cafés and shops around it, the plain, rather grubby façade in Amsterdam (heritage laws mean it can't be cleaned or illuminated at night) cuts a rather stern, almost disapproving figure. It's an image the team here are keen to dispel, envisaging it as much of a local hangout as a gilded retreat for high-net-worth guests. Thomas Harlander, the hotel's managing director, tells me that curious Amsterdamers have been dropping in to explore the building, enjoying the two courtyards landscaped by the High Line designer Piet Oudolf and a modestly priced, well-populated all-day café. The main court room, where high-profile cases (such as the 1980s kidnapping of the brewery billionaire Freddy Heineken) were tried, is now a sprawling library space with a vintage grand piano in one corner and a modern tapestry depicting an AI-realised missing part of Rembrandt's The Night Watch. Its openness is reflected in its design. 'We thought it was important that people could see into the building — transparency is a very Amsterdam thing,' says Piet Boon, whose city-based studio also designed Rosewood's first Japanese resort on Miyakojima. 'During Covid we'd walk around the canals, peering into houses to see how other people lived.' • Read more luxury reviews, advice and insights from our experts Anyone able to peer through my third-floor suite window would glimpse a soft-focus space with curvaceous sofa and chairs, a drinks cabinet with small bottles of ready-mixed cocktails to one side, and a framed set of vintage Amsterdam postcards on the wall. In the bathroom, a white stone tub is positioned by the window, while the bed, backed by a mottled-gold headboard, looks out over gabled houses and the canal (on my arrival, almost on cue, a little boat motors past with a cargo of tulips). Among the 134 rooms are also five 'Houses'. These are apartment-sized suites, such as the Library House, styled in whiter-shade-of-pale bling with windows on two sides and a cascade of small chandeliers, lined by shelves filled with books and collectables. House 020 displays a bespoke collection of jewellery by Bibi van der Velden. But it's the hotel's 1,000-piece art collection that really catches the imagination. The lobby was inspired by the dramatic entrance of the Rijksmuseum, with sightlines that take you straight through to an enormous screen at the far end — the canvas for swirling, fluctuating video art, shifting from vivid floral still-lifes to ethereal classical figures, sourced from the Nxt Museum nearby. Along one corridor runs a series of white, colour-changing discs resembling a vintage radio valve, casting an orange glow over walls and ceiling. I'm particularly taken by a vase in the lobby made entirely of Smurf figures, while Maarten Baas's Grandfather Clock, in which a figure looms into view every minute to scrub out the minute hand and re-draw it, is surprisingly enthralling. In the entrance, Studio Molen's Statica — displayed at last year's Art Basel Hong Kong — is a trellis-like city made up of tiny bronze figures, which can be picked up and slotted back in new homes. There's an abundance of space here, a rarity in this city where many hotels are squeezed into canalside townhouses. The subterranean spa, its swimming pool cast in daylight from a long aperture above, has hammam-style arches and a monastic calm. There's also a space for reformer Pilates and sound therapy, though the 90-minute aromatic restore massage was all I needed. Along a corridor you could ride a tuk-tuk down is the moodily lit Advocatuur bar, flamboyantly dressed with diamond-shaped pendants above the counter and a menu of Indian-inspired cocktails and small plates. (I'm told that the late mayor requested an Indian restaurant here when he brokered the deal, along with Ayurvedic treatments and a club for the city's thriving Indian business community.) Further along is Eeuwen, the main restaurant — an intimate space where a painting of a rather louche young man gazes down at me as I devour Zeeland oysters topped with tingly grapefruit granita, and pork chop with creamy dollops of sea vierge and celeriac puree. The chef David Ordóñez has a nimble way with Dutch ingredients, with an approach that's more bistro than fine dining (little slabs of brioche topped with crab salad is a highlight, and quite rightly arrives on its own little plinth). Amsterdam's food scene has ramped up in recent years, a side of the city the Rosewood is keen to champion. I hop on board Captain Arnaut's Twenties salon boat, moored outside, and take the 90-minute voyage to Der Durgerdam, a small hotel in a village of the same name where the inventive lunch menu includes tomato tartare and a rare pudding of caramelised celeriac pie. The Rosewood is also linking up with Over-Amstel, the new farm from the South African owners of the Newt, taking guests there by boat for yoga and cheese-making sessions. Back at the Rosewood, I'm beckoned downstairs to make my own artistic contribution to the hotel. One of the law court's former holding cells has been turned into a very intimate, palo santo-scented tasting room for the hotel's genever — the OG of gin — distilled in a gleaming still named Martha. The bar manager signs me up for a kopstootje, a Dutch tradition that involved taking the first sip of genever with your arms behind your back, then chasing it with a pickled egg and small glass of beer. The ritual ends with a temporary tattoo rubbed on my wrist and then I graffiti my name on the wall — I'm part of the club. With the genever christened Provo, in honour of a short-lived Sixties anarchist-art movement — which included flooding the city with free bikes painted white to counter the tyranny of the motorcar — it's another irreverent attempt to puncture the building's formality. I wonder how radical a hotel that charges €1,200 a night can actually be, but like the rest of Rosewood Amsterdam, it's a refreshing way of transporting guests beyond the city's clichés. Doubles from £1,200,
Sydney Morning Herald
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
New York's most fascinating neighbourhood is across a familiar bridge
Later that afternoon I sip a stein of excellent Czech beer at Bohemian Beer Hall And Garden ( which has been here since 1910 and is the oldest biergarten in New York. In the evening I experience the modern flipside at SingleCut Beersmiths ( a buzzing post-industrial space which became the first brewery to open in Queens since Prohibition when it debuted in 2012. The next morning I head to MOMI – the Museum Of The Moving Image built on the site of the former Paramount film studios in 1989. The Behind The Scenes exhibit features interactive displays involving sound effects, music and editing, plus there are cabinets of film and TV memorabilia and a whole wall of vintage videogames that you can play. Over the years there have been immersive exhibitions based around everything from Mad Men to The Walking Dead, and a permanent Jim Henson exhibition follows his history with puppets, from Sesame Street and the Muppets movies to Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. As I wander the neighborhood that afternoon I can see the old and the new co-exist on the commercial stretches of Ditmars Boulevard, Broadway, Steinway Street and 30th Avenue. Newcomers such as Lockwood ( a trendy three-store mini-empire that sells stationery, gifts, accessories and clothing, sit alongside old-school favourites such as Alba's Pizza ( and La Guli Pastry Shop ( At the end of my two days, I have a nightcap at The Let Love Inn ( a cocktail bar that's as dark and atmospheric as the Nick Cave song Let Love In, after which it is named. As I sit at the bar sipping my drink, I go through my notebook and find something Ali El Sayed had said the previous day at Kabab Cafe. 'In the morning I have my coffee at the Italian cafe. When I shop, I deal with people who are from China and India and Bangladesh and Greece. It's a place where all these people can keep their culture, but live side by side. That's why I like living here.' And perhaps that's why Astoria is becoming the king of Queens. THE DETAILS VISIT If you're staying in midtown Manhattan you can easily get to Astoria on an N express train in about 20 minutes. Get off at Astoria-Ditmars Boulevard and you'll be right in the middle of things. STAY Tempo By Hilton New York Times Square ( rooms from $US335 [$A519]) is in the heart of midtown Manhattan, and only two blocks from the 49th Street N train stop, which takes you directly to Astoria. This 661-room hotel is the first from Hilton's Tempo brand, which emphasises affordable style and fitness/wellness.
The Age
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
New York's most fascinating neighbourhood is across a familiar bridge
Later that afternoon I sip a stein of excellent Czech beer at Bohemian Beer Hall And Garden ( which has been here since 1910 and is the oldest biergarten in New York. In the evening I experience the modern flipside at SingleCut Beersmiths ( a buzzing post-industrial space which became the first brewery to open in Queens since Prohibition when it debuted in 2012. The next morning I head to MOMI – the Museum Of The Moving Image built on the site of the former Paramount film studios in 1989. The Behind The Scenes exhibit features interactive displays involving sound effects, music and editing, plus there are cabinets of film and TV memorabilia and a whole wall of vintage videogames that you can play. Over the years there have been immersive exhibitions based around everything from Mad Men to The Walking Dead, and a permanent Jim Henson exhibition follows his history with puppets, from Sesame Street and the Muppets movies to Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. As I wander the neighborhood that afternoon I can see the old and the new co-exist on the commercial stretches of Ditmars Boulevard, Broadway, Steinway Street and 30th Avenue. Newcomers such as Lockwood ( a trendy three-store mini-empire that sells stationery, gifts, accessories and clothing, sit alongside old-school favourites such as Alba's Pizza ( and La Guli Pastry Shop ( At the end of my two days, I have a nightcap at The Let Love Inn ( a cocktail bar that's as dark and atmospheric as the Nick Cave song Let Love In, after which it is named. As I sit at the bar sipping my drink, I go through my notebook and find something Ali El Sayed had said the previous day at Kabab Cafe. 'In the morning I have my coffee at the Italian cafe. When I shop, I deal with people who are from China and India and Bangladesh and Greece. It's a place where all these people can keep their culture, but live side by side. That's why I like living here.' And perhaps that's why Astoria is becoming the king of Queens. THE DETAILS VISIT If you're staying in midtown Manhattan you can easily get to Astoria on an N express train in about 20 minutes. Get off at Astoria-Ditmars Boulevard and you'll be right in the middle of things. STAY Tempo By Hilton New York Times Square ( rooms from $US335 [$A519]) is in the heart of midtown Manhattan, and only two blocks from the 49th Street N train stop, which takes you directly to Astoria. This 661-room hotel is the first from Hilton's Tempo brand, which emphasises affordable style and fitness/wellness.
Sunday World
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sunday World
The Murder Capital can't wait for big moment at the Iveagh Gardens
While BIMM was their third level education, The Murder Capital earned their Masters touring with the legendary Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. The Murder Capital singer and songwriter James McGovern tells how Joe Wall of The Stunning played a role in encouraging him to become a frontman in the band. As the group gets set to play Dublin's Iveagh Gardens in July, James also tells Shuffle that he's totally at home in his role as the singer in the band. 'I feel being on stage is a very natural place for me to be,' James says. 'There's never a nervousness…I enjoy it in the way I enjoy eating food. One of the things we never want to do is go through the motions.' It was while in Dublin's BIMM music college, where The Murder Capital originated, that lecturer Joe Wall suggested that James had frontman potential. 'We were doing a cover of Chris Isaack's Wicked Games and I was playing the rhythm guitar and singing,' James recalls. 'I don't know what he saw that day, but he pulled me aside and said, 'I think there's a frontman in you and just consider that.' It wasn't like some moment of revelation for the two of us. So I did and here I am now.' Back with a new album, Blindness, The Murder Capital tell how the benefited from their college days in BIMM. 'I would definitely recommend BIMM to anyone going into music as a career,' bassist Gabriel Blake says. 'The education we got in those four years to focus on being a musician is invaluable, including the business side of being in a band. The lecturers are the lifeblood of that college." The Murder Captial. 'And if it wasn't for BIMM we would have had to rely on fate bringing the five of us together. I guess the reason we got off the ground so quickly is because when the five of us were in the room together there was a collective decision made to rehearse more because there were so many bands around us further down the road and we wanted to get up to that level. 'In the early days of the band we rehearsed from 10am to 5pm every day. We gave up our jobs to just focus on it and really hope that it was going to work out. And that determination and that focus that we had collectively paid off.' While BIMM was their third level education, The Murder Capital earned their Masters touring with the legendary Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. James says: 'Nick was unbelievable…what an unbelievable performer and a very generous spirit who took the time to invite us in for dinner, listened to our record (Blindness) and told us what he thought about the record. Nick is a very open book kind of person and truly born to do it as a performer. The whole band was so sweet and kind. The education we got was invaluable.' The band are forward to their concert at The Iveagh Gardens on Saturday, July 19, with pent up excitement. 'With this album we had to do something special in Ireland,' Gabriel says. 'The birthplace of the band was Dublin when we were in college together and the Iveagh Gardens always felt like a moment for a band, even if it was a band coming from overseas. So we're very excited.' James, who watched Fontaines DC in action at the Iveragh Gardens, adds: 'It contains some amount of energy in it. I couldn't believe the energy for an outdoor space because it's hard to always capture that kind of energy. I love theatres and arenas for the way that they contain energy, but it kind of does the same thing. I can't wait to find out what it's like to play it.'
