Watch The National’s Matt Berninger discuss depression “hell” with David Letterman

nme.com:

The National’s Matt Berninger has been speaking about the challenging period that led to the writing of the band’s new album ‘Laugh Track’.In a half-hour video posted on the band’s official YouTube channel, Berninger speaks to David Letterman about his struggles with depression and how a period during and following lockdown sparked the new album.You can watch the whole video below:In September, the band surprise-released their latest album ‘Laugh Track’, just a few months after also releasing April’s acclaimed ‘First Two Pages of Frankenstein’.

The band announced ‘Laugh Track’ during a concert in Cincinnati and released the album three days later.Berninger explains in the video that it was the dissonance between maintaining a public persona and a stable private life that proved difficult. “I wasn’t writing at all, but [the band] kept sending music,” he said. “I don’t think they realised quite how debilitated I was.

I didn’t really tell them how bad I was.”“I’ve known that it’s a part of me, and that it comes and goes, and I know that it’s a healthy thing to make something out of it.”He also spoke of the challenge of “having to kind of turn on a personality for an intense few hours” on stage, “and then turn it off, and then try to get some sleep and then the next day, turn it on, turn it off.”Letterman himself expressed an understanding of the struggles, sharing that the challenge of maintaining his late night show sometimes felt like “holy hell”.In September, NME spoke to Berninger about his writing process and its interaction with his mental health. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” he said, “but I believe in the power of the belief in ghosts.