The National’s Matt Berninger talks battling depression and writer’s block

nme.com:

The National frontman Matt Berninger has spoken candidly about his battle with depression and writer’s block, and how he documented it on the band’s upcoming album, ‘First Pages Of Frankenstein’.Berninger was speaking in an exclusive cover interview for the latest issue of Uncut, where he revealed how the COVID period after The National’s last record ‘I Am Easy To Find‘ [2019] and his 2020 debut solo album ‘Serpentine Prison‘ saw him facing “burnout” and a depression he likened to “the train going off the tracks”.

He explained said he found himself unable to write lyrics for a whole year.“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 said. “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.”He 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.”The latest issue of @uncutmagazine. Order it here: https://t.co/SElOIlM3UJ pic.twitter.com/oNIC0xNdtA— The National (@TheNational) April 11, 2023The frontman revealed how then went sober from alcohol and marijuana and commenced a course of antidepressants.