Photo: Press
The National have just dropped a macabre video to accompany 'I’ll Still Destroy You', a track from their seventh studio album Sleep Well Beast.
Featuring Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson and directed by Allan Sigurðsson, the video sees the Cincinnati five-piece perform their characteristically languid new track in a downmarket underground strip club.
Lending to the sinister, dreamlike quality – a portly sailor with a full ginger beard, naval hat and corncob pipe is working a stripper pole in the middle of the stage.
As the video progresses, the jolly tar disrobes revealing a pair of nipple tassels that whirl about above his prodigious gut, and later a pair of gold spangled underpants.
Elsewhere, as the bar fills with cigarette smoke, model types neck tall glasses of fizz, a string quartet plays a little Bach, and a makeshift wind machine blows confetti about the silvery locks of bespectacled frontman Matt Berninger.
The shabby-chic aesthetic is heightened by the fact old clothes are draped over the drum kit of sticksman Bryan Devendorf, as if trying to not to wake the neighbours during a home rehearsal.
Lyrically the song feels just as unmoored and disarming: "I have no positions / no point of view or vision / I’m just trying to stay in touch with / anything I’m still in touch with."
This video follows previous videos accompanying the bands’ releases 'The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness,' 'Guilty Party,' 'Carin at the Liquor Store,' and 'Day I Die.'
In fairly rock 'n' roll fashion, according to 4AD.com, this clip "…was shot in one hour at Dope & Korruption, a pop-up bar created by Ragnar offering arancini, chocolate truffles, prosecco, classical music and a sailor striptease.
"During the video shoot the bar was shut down by Danish security officials and destroyed the day after."
The National are currently on a world tour proving their new album. They play their largest headline show to date with War On Drugs the support at Victoria Park on 2 June. Tickets on sale form 9am Friday 27 October here
