It's probably unfair to compare EL VY, the new project from Matt Berninger (the National) and Brent Knopf (Ramona Falls, Menomena), to Berninger's main gig. The National have come to cast a surprisingly long shadow over indie rock: even if their booking at Barclays Center was more a case of "huge in New York" than "huge in Oklahoma," the National have emerged as a big-tent indie mainstay because their widescreen melancholia has proven durable and difficult to emulate. EL VY provides our first look at Berninger divorced from that context and a clue toward deciphering how much of the National's appeal hinges on Berninger's GQuaalude musings and how much belongs to his band's gilded alt-rock.
It's easy to say EL VY's first record, Return to the Moon, isn't a National album; it's more difficult to put a finger on what exactly it is. On lecherous lead single "I'm the Man to Be" he's still talking about his dick, the one he swung around so much on 2005 breakthrough Alligator. Elsewhere ("It's a Game") he's comfortably forlorn, trading on elegant little phrases ("It's a game/ And I can't wait to see you") like he did on 2013's Trouble Will Find Me. Knopf's jaunty and hectic keyboard-heavy arrangements are a little indistinct and, worse, noncommittal, unable to choose between glam ("I'm the Man to Be") and lounge rock ("Paul Is Alive"), between lush folk ("No Time to Crank the Sun") and boozy bluster ("Sad Case").
We get glimpses of how Berninger might fare as a Bryan Ferry-esque put-on—he has the wardrobe for it—or as Greg Dulli-indebted horndog, but only in the moments before Knopf's arrangements whisk him away. The particularly ill-fated opening trilogy—including "I'm the Man to Be", the title track, and "Paul Is Alive"—reek of that fake-funky, post-Beck period when major labels gave odd, talented bands just enough rope to hang themselves; the results sound like Berninger and Knopf deemed Soul Coughing not haughty enough. There are cooing background vocals, dirty organs, harpsi- and power chords, but it all feels random, deployed only because something has to fill these spaces.
Berninger, for all his magnetism, doesn't help matters. Absent his backing band's grandeur, his poet-laureate-of-the-upwardly-mobile-schtick cedes way to a clever misanthrope in need of an editor and an Advil. The album opens with the unforgettable and irredeemable line, "I scratched a ticket with the leg of a cricket/ And I got triple Jesus," straight from the Tweedy School of Left-Leaning Refrigerator-Magnet Poetry. He's still name dropping other musicians—the Beatles, the Cramps, the Minutemen—but he puts too fine a point on things when, in the middle of "Sleepin' Light", he declares, "Ain't no Leonard Cohen." He's still funnier than he's given credit for ("You were supposed to bring me your brother's weed...this is heartbreaking!") but he seems in on the joke less often. His haphazard proper nouns—"Silent Ivy Hotel", "Happiness, Missouri"—carry less import.
Trouble Will Find Me was well-received, but there was a sense, even amongst National die-hards, that this was the last time the band, and Berninger, could coast on that particular sound. Return to the Moon is an unhappy departure, one that suggests that Berninger is as reliant on the National's luxe environments as they are on his all-the-wine sloganeering. And while there's nothing here that suggests Berninger and Knopf are truly incompatible, there's equally little evidence that Knopf's spirited arrangements are suited to Berninger's spotlight-gargling word soup. "Return to the moon/ I'm dying," Berninger croons on the opening track. Yeah, man.
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