The National - 'A Skin, A Night / Virginia EP' (Beggars Banquet) Released 26/05/08

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Trust the National to do things differently. Having finally climbed up from the stinky confines of the toilet circuit with 2005’s much-acclaimed ‘Alligator’, most people would have expected the US art-rockers to repeat its highly successful recipe for the follow-up. Not so. In 2006, the Brooklyn-based five-piece ripped whatever ideas they’d stored away and headed to a studio to craft a new record from the scratch, the clock ticking and the bill escalating with every experimental dead-end and unworkable overdub for a band who, albeit by now firmly in the upper echelons of critically lauded alt. rock, had only just crawled out from underneath crippling debt accumulated during previous recording escapades.

Luckily for fans, French film-maker Vincent Moon, a firm supporter of the National ever since they first played in Paris in 2002, was present to capture the painfully slow creative process that ensued. Not that ‘A Skin, A Night’ is really a film about a band in studio. As could be expected from the band’s endlessly inventive records, The National comes across as such a well-oiled, communicative outfit that no matter how painfully slow the progress, the recording process lacks the frustration-fuelled drama and unintentional parody familiar from flicks – the Metallica comedy ‘Some Kind of Monster’ in particular – where band members spend more time at each others throats than actually pawing an instrument.

Moon seems so determined to skirt every cliché of rockumentaries the one-hour film often toys with scrapping narrative altogether in favour of an endless cavalcade of barely connected fragments – mute live scenes, ambience-heavy footage of planes, trains and automobiles, pre-stage rituals, shots of kids flying paper planes in some rundown estate – that occupy the same enigmatic regions as the National’s finest music. Visually stunning, the results, although hardly revealing or insightful, are pure gold for the fans, offer as they do a glimpse of the band putting together their finest album to date, last year’s mournful masterpiece ‘Boxer’, with the concluding, intense live take of ‘About Today’ from Manchester Apollo compensating amply for the odd spot of idling en route.

Most bands treat rarities round-ups as an excuse to slap a price tag on knackered 12-bar blues workouts and half-formed ideas. There’s not a whiff of slipping standards about ‘Virginia EP’, the overhaul of B-sides, covers, outtakes and live versions that accompanies the film. Calling anything this generous an EP might well alarm the Trading Standards Authority, though. At 12 tracks and almost 50 minutes, it’s longer – and more consistent in its strike-rate - than most bands’ best albums.

It says a lot about the quality of ‘Boxer’ that the National chose to chuck out tracks as impressive as ‘You’ve Done It Again, Virginia’, ‘Tall Saint’ and ‘Blank Slate’, all of which provide an excellent introduction to the band for those not yet won over by their brooding charms. As strong as these tracks (particularly the haunting, heartbreaking longing of ‘Santa Clara’) are, it’s the live stuff that really stuns, with a suitably aching take on Springsteen’s ‘Mansion on the Hill’ and a positively bruising combination of weary resignation and storming noise during another rendition of ‘About Today’ putting forward a strong case for the National being officially declared the best band in the US today.