Ohio rock band The National dropped Sleep Well Beast today, the group’s first new album since 2013’s Trouble Will Find Me. The 12-track project features the band’s recent singles “Guilty Party,” and “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness.” This time around, The National drew heavy inspiration from the current political climate of the U.S.
In a recent interview with The Atlantic, lead singer Matt Berninger explained what the band was aiming for with this album:
Trauma causes lots of reactions, and a lot of times we have to shut down for a while. I was kind of fascinated with that. There’s a time where you stare at the ceiling and think, ‘If I can just get some sleep, when I wake up something will have resolved itself.’ And often it helps! Dreams are a way of expressing some dark fear we’ve got to get out one way or another. In that sense we are in some sort of bad dream right now—I mean that kind of literally. Our American conscience went to a very sleepy place, and we allowed Donald Trump to become our president. It’s not just America; we’ve all been letting the planet get so sick. The beast [as in Sleep Well Beast] is the future, the truth. It’s about to come back, I hope.
