Credit: Far Out / Josh Goleman

The National’s Matt Berninger discusses depression and writer’s block

Wed 12 April 2023 15:55, UK

The National frontman Matt Berninger has opened up about his experience of depression and writer’s block ahead of the release of the band’s new album, First Pages Of Frankenstein.

In the latest edition of Uncut, Berninger explained how he faced “burnout” and depression similar to “the train going off the tracks” after 2019’s Easy To Find and his debut solo offering, Serpentine Prison, in 2020. During this dark period, The National singer went a whole year without writing a lyric.

“Usually when I’m in a troubled place, I can make something out of it, and write a song about it, and that does a lot to solve it,” he explained. “This time, I didn’t want to. I was uninterested in my own grief. I was uninterested in my own problems. I was maybe even a little embarrassed by it.”

Berninger continued: “Then the longer I went without really exercising that [writing] part of myself the harder it got to connect to it. The untangling, or whatever the thrill is about making something out of nothing.”

In a bid to improve his mental health, Berninger stopped drinking alcohol and consuming marijuana and also began taking antidepressants. “I’d been writing sad, depressing music for a long time, then when it really hits me, when it all really catches up to me, I didn’t want to write about it any more,” he said. “I just could not articulate the fog at all. I didn’t want to put words to it. It just all felt ugly and gross and all the thoughts in my head were small and bitter and fearful.”

After returning to The National for touring purposes last year, Berninger was uplifted by the support of his bandmates. “It was their faith,” he said. “Why are songs such magical emotional pills? Doing therapy and antidepressants and getting totally sober, none of it was making any difference. But writing a song about nothing making any difference was the thing that made a difference. That was my medicine. Lexapro doesn’t work on me, but Aaron and Bryce’s [Dessner, guitarists] sketches do.”

Listen below to their latest single, ‘Eucalyptus’, below.