The National / Clogs

Andy J Ryan Apr 06, 2023

The National – City Recital Hall, January 22 2008

One could not conceive a bigger contrast then going from beers and betting on the greyhounds at the rissole to being led into the salubrious catacombs of the City Recital Hall for astonishing musical collective Clogs.

Looking like the type of people that would be really proficient at fixing your computer but actually being more proficient at stirring your soul with the most wondrous music conjured from mostly classically based, but also some rather more whimsical, instruments that may need a botanist to name them.

The National’s Dessner brothers ambled on to lend assistance on six and four strings in some of the more structured numbers, almost as if they were the musical straight men to the abounding and varied virtuosity around them.

The National just come on, plug in and go about their business barely wasting a note the entire evening. They are just so utterly astute, committed and entirely drawn into their own songs. Most ending with a beautiful fragile raggedness that comes from sheer exasperation as each song takes on its own dynamic, evolving force and is seemingly experienced by the band, not merely performed.

When various members of Clogs appear on-stage through the course of the set, it is like someone placing a food order ‘with all the trimmings’. It is as if every last possible strum, structure and tuning has been mined for even the slightest addition of musical lustre.

The night ends in the only possible manner to do it justice – a standing ovation.