Matt Berninger - serpentine prison, 2020

"Berninger’s sentimentality usually pushes back against the National’s reputation for self-serious art rock, but it doesn’t hold up as well on its own. “One More Second” was conceived as a response to “I Will Always Love You,” but the lyrics are so boilerplate (“The way we talked last night/It felt like a different kind of fight”) that it could be a response to just about anything. When Berninger ambles about, barely stringing together melodies on “Oh Dearie” as Andrew Bird’s violin soars and Mickey Raphael’s bass harmonica drones, he feels like the least talented person on his own album. He’s most at home revisiting familiar themes of intimacy and projection on the title track: “I feel like an impersonation of you/Or am I doing another version of you doing me?” It’s not that the emperor has no clothes, it’s that these don’t fit."