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THE NATIONAL
announce 2024 Australian Tour
with very special guest
FLEET FOXES
& ANNIE HAMILTON

PRESENTED BY LIVE NATION & DOUBLE J

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Photo – ©GrahamMacIndoe

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Live Nation and Double J are excited to announce the return of The National to Australia for the first time since 2018, joined by very special guests Fleet Foxes, and Annie Hamilton.

Hitting our shores in February/March 2024, this extraordinary line-up sees The National and Fleet Foxes touring together for the very first time, playing shows in some of Australia’s finest venues, including Melbourne’s iconic Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Brisbane’s Riverstage, Sydney’s Aware Super Theatre,  and Perth’s stunning Kings Park and Botanic Garden.

Joining The National for the tour will be one of Indie Folk’s most acclaimed acts, Fleet Foxes.  Led by lead singer-songwriter Robin Pecknold, Fleet Foxes have won a legion of fans and garnered critical acclaim for making music full of wonderful orchestrations, and gorgeous melodies that fuse earthy, harmony-rich folk-rock with a sense of lush pop sophistication. 

Also last here in 2018, Fleet Foxes will tour Australia for the first time since the release of their 2020 fourth studio album ‘Shore’, which earned the band their second Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Album, and sweeping praise from MOJO (five stars), Rolling Stone (four stars), and Pitchfork (the fifth consecutive Best New Music), with Rolling Stone calling the album ‘…the most immediately rewarding Fleet Foxes record since their brilliant 2008 debut.’

Opening for all shows will be Australian singer, songwriter, and guitarist Annie Hamilton.

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Tickets for all shows go on sale at 12pm, Friday September 22.

My Live Nation members can secure tickets during the exclusive presale beginning at 1pm, Thursday September 21 – 11am, Friday September 22.

For complete tour and ticket information, visit: livenation.com.au

The National has released a surprise second album of 2023, Laugh Track, which the band announced Friday night while performing at its Homecoming Festival in Cincinnati. The 12-song Laugh Track is a companion to and features material originally started in the same sessions as First Two Pages of Frankenstein, which was released by 4AD / Remote Control Records in April. The National has also confirmed Australian shows next spring with support from longtime friends Fleet Foxes. Full tour dates below.

Laugh Track is the band’s most freewheeling, all-hands-on-deck album in years. If Frankenstein represented a rebuilding of trust between group members after 20+ years together, the vibrant, exploratory Laugh Track is both the product of that faith and a new statement of intent. Reveling in the license to radically upend its creative process, The National honed most of this material in live performances on tour this year, and captured those invigorated versions in impromptu sessions at producer Tucker Martine’s Portland studio, Flora Recording & Playback. The nearly eight-minute album closer ‘Smoke Detector’ was recorded in June during a Vancouver soundcheck, completing a body of work bristling with spontaneity and vintage rock energy that makes a perfect complement to the songs found on its more introspective predecessor.

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Laugh Track features guest appearances by Phoebe Bridgers and Rosanne Cash, as well as the Bon Iver collaboration ‘Weird Goodbyes,’ which was released as a standalone track in August 2022. “It felt like the story had already been told. It was its own thing,” says group member Aaron Dessner of the latter track. “But it also felt related to what we were doing. That was part of the logic for making another record — let’s give ‘Weird Goodbyes’ its own home.”

There was another side of the story in the songs left uncompleted, which ranged far beyond the gentleness of Frankenstein. Over the years, Aaron admits The National has often bailed on grand ideas of making a rock record. “It’s not because we don’t enjoy sitting in a room banging around ideas. It’s just that it wasn’t that productive, so we developed a fairly elaborate way of building songs in which [drummer] Bryan [Devendorf] had a very important but compartmentalized role,” he says. “This time we had the desire to make something that was more alive so that Bryan’s playing would drive more.”

Thematically, there’s no intentional split between Frankenstein and Laugh Track. But if the former found frontman Matt Berninger in search of sanctuary, here there is a newly clear-eyed assessment of what matters. His fierce need for intimacy is heightened by an ever-greater fear of modern life’s unreality. The characters on this album (no first names, other than a tour manager named Alice – just “I” and “you”) cover for one another, dream for one another, and help maintain appearances – living up to the promise of absolute care that Matt made on Frankenstein closer ‘Send for Me.’

As for what doesn’t matter? ‘Turn Off the House’ concludes the emotional inventories Berninger took on ‘Weird Goodbyes’ and Frankenstein’s ‘Eucalyptus,’ a desolate surrender to leaving everything behind. “Tell them that you’ve gone to see / If you can find out what it means / When your mind leaves your body,” he sings. His recent struggles with writer’s block and depression still lingers, but there’s acceptance in it. “Let’s just turn everything off and walk away,” he says. “Bail out of your head, of all the things you’re worried about, your career, your whole identity, how strong you thought you were.” Then, of course, there’s ‘Smoke Detector.’  “It felt like the epitaph,” says Matt. “Burn it all down at the end.”

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First Two Pages of Frankenstein debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Rock and Alternative Album charts, while ‘Tropic Morning News’ spent five weeks atop its Adult Alternative Airplay tally, marking The National’s first song to hit that peak since 2017. NME proclaimed it the band’s “finest album in a decade,” while the Wall Street Journal called it “a wry, melancholy album full of remarkable focus.”

Formed in New York in 1999, The National’s last four albums have all been in the Top 5 in the UK charts, with 2017’s Grammy award-winning (for Best Alternative Album) Sleep Well Beast hitting Number 1. In the US, The National have scored five top 10 albums on The Billboard 200.

Stream / Download Laugh Track HERE

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THE NATIONAL

WITH VERY SPECIAL GUESTS
FLEET FOXES + ANNIE HAMILTON

RIVERSTAGE, BRISBANE
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 28

AWARE SUPER THEATRE, SYDNEY
FRIDAY MARCH 1

SIDNEY MYER MUSIC BOWL, MELBOURNE
TUESDAY MARCH 5

KINGS PARK AND BOTANIC GARDEN, PERTH
SATURDAY MARCH 9

Tickets for all shows go on sale at 12pm, Friday September 22.

My Live Nation members can secure tickets during the exclusive presale beginning at 1pm, Thursday September 21 – 11am, Friday September 22.

For complete tour and ticket information, visit: livenation.com.au

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The National
Laugh Track

1. Alphabet City
2. Deep End (Paul’s in Pieces)
3. Weird Goodbyes (feat. Bon Iver)
4. Turn Off the House
5. Dreaming
6. Laugh Track (feat. Phoebe Bridgers)
7. Space Invader
8. Hornets
9. Coat on a Hook
10. Tour Manager
11. Crumble (feat. Rosanne Cash)
12. Smoke Detector

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The National
First Two Pages Of Frankenstein

1. Once Upon A Poolside (feat. Sufjan Stevens)
2. Eucalyptus
3. New Order T-Shirt
4. This Isn’t Helping (feat. Phoebe Bridgers)
5. Tropic Morning News
6. Alien
7. The Alcott (feat. Taylor Swift)
8. Grease In Your Hair
9. Ice Machines
10. Your Mind Is Not Your Friend (feat. Phoebe Bridgers)
11. Send For Me

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Follow THE NATIONAL
Website – Facebook – Instagram = Twitter
4ad.com – remotecontrolrecords.com.au

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About Live Nation Entertainment

Live Nation Entertainment (NYSE: LYV) is the world’s leading live entertainment company comprised of global market leaders: Ticketmaster, Live Nation Concerts, and Live Nation Media & Sponsorship. For additional information, visit livenationentertainment.com.

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AMNPLIFY – DB