[photo courtesy of Mina K]
I spoke to The National’s excellent engineer Brendan last night after their show at The Studio at Webster Hall. The band flew back recently from an Australia tour and forwarded all of their equipment to Brussels, where they will begin a tour of Europe in a few days. The band had to rent equipment for last night’s MTV taping, but the performance didn’t suffer at all. The set time of 9 p.m. was strict, as the band began only a few minutes after the hour with “Runaway”. Matt was in a playful mood, with abundant joking banter in between songs. Highlighted songs on the written setlist translated into songs contemplated for airing on MTV.com, which provided Matt with a punch line — “this next song is not highlighted, so its ok if we f* it up”. Despite persistent shouts of requests (including one fan who screamed for Ada after every song), the band stuck to the list which included much of the latest album High Violet, a few standard older choices and one semi-rare song (“Lucky You”). The National completed the set with a rousing “Terrible Love”, which featured Matt stalking through the entire audience straight to the back of the floor where he climbed the cage around a video camera and then crowd surfed until the end of the song. The set concluded at 10:20pm, and despite some calls for an encore, the house lights and music came up and the set was over.
This show will be available for viewing at MTV’s “Live In NYC” site on February 21.
We didn’t record this show, but The National have been on nyctaper plenty of times [search here] or [here].
The National
2011-02-08
The Studio at Webster Hall
New York NY
MTV Taping
Setlist
[approximate time 1:15]
01 Runaway
02 Anyone’s Ghost
03 Bloodbuzz Ohio
04 Slow Show
05 Squalor Victoria
06 Afraid of Everyone
07 Conversation 16
08 Lucky You
09 Abel
10 England
11 Fake Empire
12 Mr. November
13 Terrible Love
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