Get Sunk

Matt Berninger is the vocalist and lyricist for Grammy Award-winning band The National. His songwriting has long garnered praise for its poignant clarity, jagged-edged wit and intimately emotive melodies. His second solo album, Get Sunk, is not an autobiographical album, but the narrator is processing how he became himself.

Get Sunk is an ode to the infinite. It brings brush-stroked, blurry memories to the surface, amassing in a heap of colors and connections that stretches beyond individuality and into an endless altering. Underwater, everything moves in slow motion and for Matt Berninger, he saw his creative voice slipping away with the current. But sometimes we have to drown to remember how to breathe. Get Sunk is the purgative inhale. It's seeing the undulating reflection in the water and realizing that you are not yourself without a thousand others: parents, friends, siblings, spouses and exes, college roommates, childhood best friends, cousins and kids, strangers even--all of it--make up the spirit of Get Sunk's narrator. Berninger wanted to figure out why he loves what he does and it's in the album's collaborative spirit and loose, unfurling attitude that Berninger looked up and felt the warmth on his face. When we sink into ourselves, we'll often find that we are actually swimming with others.