The National, with The War On Drugs and Lucius

The National gets it. Their most recent album, last year’s Laugh Track, bears a title that winks at the band’s reputation as a purveyor of grumbling, depressive mid-life anthems, and the “Sad Dad” shirts and hoodies available at its merch booth flat-out embrace it.

But it’s that same sly self-awareness that prevents the National from succumbing to the worst excesses of miserablist wallowing. On Saturday at the Xfinity Center, the band showed how to make being a bummer into a life-affirming experience.

What it didn’t show was how to get maximum impact out of it. “Sea Of Love” kicked things off with Matt Berninger’s loud, clear vocals and Bryan Devendorf’s busy drums foregrounded while the other five instruments blended into an energetic churn, and that imbalance carried through the entire concert. The songs wanted to ping and explode across the concert grounds but were stymied. When guitar leads happened, it was possible to hear their contours amid the backing but not the substance; they added an assaultive, staticky squelch to “The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness,” a sonic detail rather than a melodic one. The overall effect was that Berninger sounded like he was fronting a band situated hundreds of feet behind him.

Given that, he was a formidable frontman, albeit a curious and low-key one. With a conversational baritone that he deployed with a halting cadence, he came off like someone commenting on lead singer behavior. He threw little tantrums all over the place, like when he kicked over his microphone stand and struggled with a mic cord that had gotten stuck on an on-stage lighting rig, but for all the dramatics, it was clear that he was playacting for effect. Even his shrieks during the bright, churning drive of “Mr. November” seemed measured.

That left a wide contrast between Berninger’s vocals (deadpan and resigned) and Devendorf’s drums (busy and exciting). Even as the rest of the band bled together, the latter added a powerful rhythm to “Graceless” and navigated the complex shift to triplet time in “Fake Empire” with ease. He was assisted by the addition of an unwavering shaker that helped drive the crooked drumbeat of “The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness” forward.

But the weird mix wasn’t fatal, just … weird. Even with dampers on, the band was still able to pull off plenty of fierce bummers. “Pink Rabbits” ride on a mid-tempo piano drive, a vocal by Berninger that was much higher than his usual lowing and horns played for sloppy, drunken melancholy. “Apartment Story” built and built until it was almost shoegaze in its undifferentiated wash and “Space Invader” (the only song of the night from the most recent album) created its own, yes, space a little more intentionally. And if Berninger and Devendorf were the ones who gave “Don’t Swallow The Cap” its urgency, the rest of the National were able to get the heart racing.

Coming one song from the end, “Terrible Love” was a microcosm of the whole concert that preceded it. The guitars had a reverb echo that didn’t add much melodically but generated just enough of a rhythmic effect to be felt while the drums kept pushing and the rest of the band soared at a distance. And then there was Berninger, stalking stonefaced around the stage and illustrating the lyric “It’s a terrible love and I’m walking with spiders” with a stuffed arachnid tossed to him by a fan that he shoved under his shirt so he could make it emerge like the chestburster from Alien. With the full strength of the National behind him, it might not have been the only thing bursting in people’s chests.

Openers Lucius also built their set around vocals and rhythm, all jumpy indie pop with two frontwomen dressed in flowing lamé singing from the pit of their guts. Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe were never far from a percussion instrument they could clonk — “Tempest” had four people banging on drums at once — and their simultaneous vocals rode in unison until they forked into heartrending harmony. It culminated in “Genevieve,” cockeyed funky like “Honky Tonk Women,” and building to a wild ending with multiple cowbells and a ripping guitar solo.

Where Lucius sounded gloriously cobbled together from parts lying around, the War On Drugs were meticulously layered. Every song was a frictionless whoosh that began with lengthy scene setting and reached a midpoint at which it had an inertia that couldn’t be undone. They were all driven by muscle and blood, a far cry from what can sometimes come across as sterile exercises on record, and they ended with a cover of Tom Petty’s “Love Is A Long Road” that was played perfectly faithfully and sounded exactly like the War On Drugs.

Setlist for The National at Xfinity Center — September 14, 2024

Sea Of Love
Eucalyptus
Tropic Morning News
Demons
Don’t Swallow The Cap
Bloodbuzz Ohio
The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness
I Need My Girl
Apartment Story
Lit Up
Alien
Space Invader
Day I Die
Rylan (with Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe of Lucius)
England
Graceless
Fake Empire

ENCORE

Pink Rabbits
Mr. November
Terrible Love
About Today