The National's Matt Berninger on Making His First Solo LP, Working With Booker T. Jones, and the Power of Art

Matt Berninger, front man of the National, intended his new album Serpentine Prison (Book's Records) due out October 16, to be a collection of covers and very much a solo effort. It didn't turn out that way. "It's funny," Berninger tells Newsweek. "It is a solo album, but it's the most collaborative thing I've ever worked on with the most people at one time. So it's the opposite of a solo effort—it was a huge group effort. I couldn't have done it without any single one of them."

It's not the first time he's changed course. During the late dot.com boom of the late 1990s, he was pursuing a career as a graphic designer, becoming a creative director at a new media company in New York City, working on projects for clients like The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the makers of Viagra. Back in school, though, at the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, Berninger was the singer in a band that included his friend Scott Devendorf. When the dot.com bubble burst, Berninger decided to try one last time to make his hobby his profession. He formed a new band in Brooklyn with Cincinnati friends: Devendorf (bass) and his brother Bryan (drums) and another pair of brothers, Aaron (guitar, keyboards) and Bryce Dessner (guitar). "The National started in the middle of that," Berninger recalls. "I had saved enough money to be able to take [some time] off. We went out and did a tour, and one slowly became the other."

Two decades later, the National are one of indie rock's biggest bands, having recorded eight studio albums and toured the world. Their music, which blends elaborate, widescreen cinematic soundscapes with Berninger's distinct baritone and somber lyrics, has drawn both critical raves and a large and loyal audience.

Now for his first record under his own name, Berninger recruited a large cast of collaborators including singer/songwriter Andrew Bird; singer and longtime David Bowie bassist Gail Ann Dorsey; the Walkmen's Walter Martin and Matt Barrick; and the National's Scott Devendorf. Musically, Serpentine Prison is not a drastic departure from the National—Berninger's weary voice and introspective songwriting are constants—but it is a bit earthier and more stripped-down than the band's recent efforts.

The original plan for Berninger's first proper solo album (not counting 2015's Return to the Moon, recorded by his side band EL VY) was to try to do something like Willie Nelson's 1981 classic album Stardust, a collection of standards by composers like Hoagy Carmichael, Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington and George and Ira Gershwin. Berninger grew up listening to the album, a favorite of his dad's. "It wasn't like, 'Oh I wanted to do a solo album,'" Berninger explains. "I wanted to make something like that record, because that record is such a big part of my family."

The only possible choice to produce the record was the same guy who had produced Nelson's Stardust nearly 40 years ago, Booker T. Jones, keyboardist of the legendary Booker T. and the MG's. Berninger and Jones have been friends since 2011 when Berninger was invited to appear on Jones' album The Road From Memphis, which included collaborations with Lou Reed, Sharon Jones, My Morning Jacket's Jim James, the Roots' Questlove and Lauryn Hill. "I was terrified," Berninger remembers. "I couldn't even believe I got asked to do this. [Booker Jones] treated me the same as he treated Lou Reed and Sharon Jones, and everyone else who was in the room. He was such a focused, calm center of that storm. So that's why I think he was perfect for [my record]. I just needed somebody with that kind of musical focus in a studio."

Although he's set out to do an all-covers album, Berninger had also composed several original songs. "They didn't feel like they fit on anything else, like a National or an EL VY record. So I had all these orphaned songs. Booker really liked those, and I wrote some more originals in the process. When we went in the studio, we recorded 12 originals and seven covers. I picked 10 of the originals that made the best record, and then it was like, 'Well, that's a solo album, not a covers album,'" he says laughing.

Some of the songs on Serpentine Prison have been released ahead of the album, among them the anthemic "Distant Axis" and the folky and philosophical title ballad. Berninger says, "I think I wrote all the lyrics to that one really fast. It was one of those things that you just keep writing and you get a pattern and rhyme. 'Serpentine Prison' was written in the pattern of Dr. Seuss language and with rhyme. It developed into this laundry list of anxieties and I think that's what Dr. Seuss' books are: a laundry list of anxieties put to rhyme in a funny story."

Another track, the tender "One More Second," is Berninger's take on "classic, simple, desperate love songs" like Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" and Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U." "I think all these songs are synonymous," he says. "I just keep putting together these playlists of my favorite songs and I realize every single one of them—Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, Nina Simone, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Cat Power—everybody keeps writing the same song over and over and over and over again. And it's all about the basics: 'I need to just to be seen, to be understood, to be recognized as someone.'"

The songs on Serpentine Prison were written and recorded before the pandemic but the somber tone fits the present. "Honestly, it kind of goes back to the Supreme Court deciding that George Bush had won [the presidency in 2000]," Berninger says. "That was when I think this existential dread sank in for me. And then 9/11, and then everything since 9/11, has been a series of traumas."

"The things that are impossible to communicate with other forms of language—that's where art comes in," he adds. "I was listening to Nina Simone at Carnegie Hall, and that record felt like it was written for me right now. She performed that concert for me for this time, when I needed it. But the truth is Nina Simone was processing everything that we're processing right now: fear of not being heard and understood and that's what everyone is doing. If you go look at an exhibition from Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol or Robert Mapplethorpe, all of these people are trying to communicate to those around them, their parents, their friends, their community, their city, their home, their country. They were using art to communicate in ways that the [media] outlets cannot."

Berninger is not the only member of the National who has been keeping busy. Aaron and Bryce Dessner collaborated with Taylor Swift on her latest album Folklore and Bryan Devendorf unveiled a debut record under the name Royal Green. The National's tour dates for this year were interrupted by the pandemic and have been rescheduled for 2021. Berninger says it's going to be difficult to do socially distanced shows. "If I can't go into that crowd, if I can't get tears in my eyes, and [nobody's] screaming and singing and crying and getting happy in a mosh pit, it doesn't feel like a National show," he says. "Everyone will have to adjust. Then again, does anybody know what they're doing in 2021?"

Looking back, Berninger says he couldn't imagine still performing in a critically-acclaimed rock band for over 20 years, having come a long way from his graphic design days. "I've learned all kinds of other things," he says. "I learned how to be a stage performer, I learned how to be a better songwriter." He also says he can't quite believe how it's all worked out. Last year, prior to a show in Portugal, the band communicated via a NASA link with American astronaut Jessica Meir aboard the International Space Station. The National later performed their song "Looking for Astronauts" on stage. "I can't even process this now that that happened," Berninger says. "I walked through muddy puddles between festival tents in the dark and Leonard Cohen passed me and he tipped his hat. I was wearing a fedora, and he said to me, 'Nice hat.' And I said, 'Likewise,' and we literally brushed shoulders. I've been on stage with Iggy Pop and Patti Smith at Carnegie Hall. I don't know how that happened. I'm just thankful."