Photo: Press
The National's Matt Berninger and Brent Knopf from Ramona Fall have formed a new side-project, EL VY. Hear their brilliant first track 'Return To The Moon' below.
Just to get this out of the way, the band say that their name is "pronounced like a plural of Elvis; rhymes with 'hell pie'". They'll be releasing their debut album Return To The Moon via 4AD on 30 October.
The first taster of the album is the title track - a breezy and summer-y piece of choppy guitar-pop anthemics, drenched in Berninger's trademark reflective and majestic melancholy. It's one of the best new songs we've heard in a while.
Listen to 'Return To The Moon' below
"I never worried about sending Matt something unfinished," says Knopf of the project. "He's able to imagine where it can go. He can grab the four bars that will become the core of the track and develop them into something amazing."
Berninger added: "This record is more autobiographical than anything else I’ve written, but the details aren’t true. It’s written in the voices of a few invented characters, composites of different people—myself, my wife, and other people I was thinking about."
The tracklist for Return To The Moon is:
01 Return to the Moon (Political Song for Didi Bloome to Sing, With Crescendo)
02 I'm the Man to Be
03 Paul Is Alive
04 Need A Friend
05 Silent Ivy Hotel
06 No Time to Crank the Sun
07 It's a Game
08 Sleepin' Light (ft. Ural Thomas) 09 Sad Case
10 Happiness, Missouri
11 Careless
For those of you waiting for a new National album, Berninger told Gigwise that they'd be 'changing their approach'.
"We're talking about getting together, which won't be until about October, taking a little break and then getting together to try and write together in a room - which we've never done," said Berninger. "We always work on little things and email back and forth. We have no idea whether it's going to work or not, but that's as far as we've got with the new record: trying to work out a plan and a different approach.
"That might fail miserably, but then we'll try it a different way."
When asked if the band had any idea or hopes on what their next record could sound like, Berninger said: "No, not really. Everybody's been talking about it and people have different ideas about what kind of record they want to make. But every time we all talk about that, it never helps anyone figure it out. It's never a very good creative catalyst to say 'I'm going to make this kind of record'. It's never been that helpful for me at least, let's just wait to see where things go organically and naturally."
