First Two Pages of Frankenstein

After the release of I Am Easy to Find (2019) and the cancellation of The National's touring as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the band members retreated from each other. Lead singer and lyricist Matt Berninger released the solo record Serpentine Prison. Bryce Dessner, now living in France, worked on film scores and classical compositions. Aaron Dessner produced two albums by Taylor Swift and recorded the highly collaborative How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?, the second studio album with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon as part of their side-project Big Red Machine. Bryan and Scott Devendorf assisted other musicians with making their music.[5]

Work on a ninth National album was initially stalled while Berninger navigated "a very dark spot where I couldn't come up with lyrics or melodies at all. Even though we'd always been anxious whenever we were working on a record, this was the first time it ever felt like maybe things really had come to an end."[6] Bryce Dessner said that the band eventually "managed to come back together and approach everything from a different angle, and because of that we arrived at what feels like a new era for the band."[7] According to Aaron Dessner, a turning point came with the lead single "Tropic Morning News", which was co-written with Berninger's wife, Carin Besser, and partly recorded live in Hamburg: "When Matt came in with that song in the depths of his depression, it felt like a turning point for us. It's almost Dylan-esque in its lyrics and it's so much fun to play; everything suddenly felt like it was coming alive again."[8][9]

The album was produced by the National at Aaron Dessner's Long Pond studio in Hudson Valley, New York. It features guest vocalists Sufjan Stevens, Phoebe Bridgers and Taylor Swift.[6] Additional recording sessions took place at numerous studios and locations across the United States and Europe. The album also features the London Contemporary Orchestra, who recorded sessions at The Empire Studio in London in May 2022, and at RAK Studios in London in August 2022.[10]

Created by the design company Pentagram, the front cover of First Two Pages of Frankenstein features a photograph of a young boy holding a mannequin's head. The photograph was taken by the boy's father, John Solimine, an illustrator and longtime friend of vocalist Matt Berninger.[11] Solimine and Berninger met as dishwashers in a Cincinnati restaurant.[11] Solimine has previously worked with the National on several concert posters and alongside Berninger on illustrations for his side project EL VY.[11] In possible relation to the album's title, Solimine released a children's book titled Does Frankenstein Get Hungry? in 2018.[11]

Bass guitarist Scott Devendorf, a former graphic designer who works closely on the band's album covers, described the mannequin as "not a phrenological head".[11]

On August 19, 2022, Aaron Dessner revealed in an interview with Laura Barton in the i newspaper that a new National album was scheduled for 2023.[5] A standalone single, "Weird Goodbyes", featuring Bon Iver, was released three days later.[12] The National first teased the album on social media on January 13, 2023, with a video of Berninger reading Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein on a piano bench. The posts linked to a password-protected page on their official website. The unlocked page featured an image of an open book with text mirroring Shelley's novel, but written as a letter addressed "To Mrs. Bridgers, England" and mentioning people named "Taylor" and "Uncle Sufjan".[13][14]

First Two Pages of Frankenstein was officially announced on January 18, 2023, with the release of the album's lead single, "Tropic Morning News", and the announcement of a supporting tour starting in May 2023.[15] The tour will feature the opening acts Patti Smith, Soccer Mommy, the Beths, and Bartees Strange.[16] A second single, "New Order T-Shirt", was released on February 23, 2023. The release was accompanied by the sale of a limited edition T-shirt created in partnership with New Order.[17] A third single, "Eucalyptus", was released on March 22, 2023.[18] The fourth single, "Your Mind Is Not Your Friend", was released on April 12, 2023.[19] "The Alcott" was released as the fifth single to Italian radio stations on April 28, 2023.[2] It was released to US triple A radio on May 1, 2023.[20]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
AnyDecentMusic?	7.5/10[21]
Metacritic	79/100[22]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[23]
Clash	8/10[24]
The Daily Telegraph	[25]
The Independent	[26]
Mojo	[27]
NME	[28]
The Observer	[29]
Pitchfork	6.6/10[1]
Rolling Stone	[30]
Uncut	8/10[11]

At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an average score of 79, based on 21 reviews.[22]

Andrew Trendell of NME gave the album a perfect 5-star rating, deeming it the band's best album since Trouble Will Find Me.[28] James Mellen of Clash praised the album's "level of fluidity and richness stitched together with the highest calibre of performance, production and songwriting. Like Frankenstein and his monster, the commitment to the design and blueprint of this record is incredible; every minute detail, sound, glitch, has been selected with the utmost care by The National".[24] Rolling Stone's Clayton Purdom called it "a remarkable reassertion of the band's potency".[30]

Reviewing the album for AllMusic, editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine declared that, "Melodies aren't absent, but they're not forceful, they're sung as suggestions. Forward movement is achieved through shifts in texture and feel, momentum created through layers of harmony and weaving acoustic instruments through electronic beddings."[23]

In a mixed review, Grayson Haver Currin of Mojo called it "a sometimes-striking record that suggests new ground without actually reaching it".[27] Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen of The Sydney Morning Herald questioned if the band "might be stagnating with this release, which has less of the daring ideas they've explored on their last few".[31]