Earned a master's degree at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. with degrees in English and Communications. Graduated from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore. He grew up, in order, in California, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oregon. He regularly covers the Oscars and the Emmys, goes to Comic-Con and Coachella, reviews pop music, and conducts interviews with authors and actors, musicians and directors, a little of this and a whole lot of that.

Peter Larsen has been the Pop Culture Reporter for the Orange County Register since 2004, finally achieving the neat trick of getting paid to report and write about the stuff he's obsessed about pretty much all his life. “Send for me, I’ll come and get you.” Related Articles “Send for me, whenever, wherever,” Berninger sang over and over. Then, the new “Send For Me,” closed out the night, with a different, more hopeful side of that thought. A simple song, it fits alongside all the doubts and dark thoughts Berninger sees when he looks into the abyss of his heart.’

On “About Today,” which reaches back to 2004’s “Cherry Tree” album, the singer worries his inattention might cost him his lover. “Terrible Love,” one of the National’s greatest tunes, took the crowd to a peak before a pair of songs served almost as a coda to all the emotions that had come before them. November,” another of the big anthemic rock songs. The encore opened with the piano and skittering drums of “Weird Goodbye,” dedicated to opening act Soccer Mommy, and “Mr. The main set wrapped up with more fan favorites including “England” and “Graceless,” the latter of which saw Berninger go into the pit to sing amid the crowd, before “Fake Empire” led to the break with a lovely piano and drums open that built to a big, beautiful finish. In just the first nine shows on the First Two Pages of Frankenstein tour, the band has mixed more than 60 songs in and out of a set that usually lands on 26 songs per night.Īt the Greek on Tuesday, that included less-often played songs such as “I’ll Still Destroy You,” a song off 2017’s “Sleep Well Beast” album, “Rylan,” a song Berninger said he wrote about a little kid who lived across the alley behind his home in the Los Angeles’ neighborhood of Venice, and “Humiliation,” which he noted was also inspired by living in Venice.

Like Wilco and Arcade Fire, two bands that would overlap heavily in a Venn diagram of literate modern rock, the National together are more than the sum of their individual parts.Īnd that allows the National the flexibility to do what few bands can do on stage from one night to the next. That’s a point worth noting here: As great as the lyrics are, the National wouldn’t succeed as wonderfully as it does without the power of the whole band working together. Other highlights in the first half of the show included fan favorites such as “Bloodbuzz Ohio” and “Conversation 16” as well as the early track “Abel,” which saw singer and band roar through the panicked plea of its chorus of “My mind’s not right!” over and over again.

(Side note: The National’s design team deserve a prize for collaborating with New Order on a combined band T-shirt to sell on this tour.) “New Order T Shirt,” which follows “Eucalyptus” on the new album and did so at the Greek, too, is a portrait perhaps of what happened later, the singer remembering flashes of good memories long after the end of the affair: “I keep what I can of you /Split-second glimpses and snapshots and sounds / You in my New Order t-shirt / Holding a cat and a glass of beer.”

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