About four minutes before the end, Matt Berninger sounds almost like the shadow lord Nick Cave during one of his more mischievous lamentations. It is the last and, according to a rather unrepresentative survey, also the best song of the surprise album “Laugh Track” – the tenth of The National and a kind of follow-up double album to the “First Two Pages of Frankenstein” that was released almost five months agohttps://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/.”Smoke Detector” is the name of the closer, created based on a jam made by the band’s sound engineer recorded during a sound check. Berninger speaks a few lines with fine laconicism, but addresses a certain blindingly dark blackness: “Make a list of your loved ones in order of heights / Laugh at the blackbirds in the black of the night / Forgive all the favorites in your phone / Imagine yourself completely alone”.
“Laugh Track” by The National: The Loved Ones, Sorted by Size – Culture
