For a band that is acclaimed as having one of the top albums in 2010, Beach House is startlingly dull to experience live. The band’s haunting and ephemeral songs, while organic and alluring on record, lack energy and momentum in concert. Awkward shifts ripple through the crowd as front lady and keyboardist, Victoria Legrand, attempts to tell jokes between songs.

Still, on this mid-summer’s eve at the Prospect Park Bandshell, hundreds herd into the pint sized venue awaiting not Beach House, but the grungy, mope-rock savants of The National. Despite some serious bad luck with the band’s gear (it got mixed up with Leonard Cohen’s in London), The National persevered after their team spent the day scrambling for spare equipment. The slow, sultry instrumental rock and berceuse flow of Matt Berninger’s vocals in “Mistaken For Strangers” is the first piece that the quintet delivers.

“I’ve recently realized that Brooklyn is more our home than Ohio,” Berninger mentions as he introduces the next song, “Bloodbuzz Ohio,” which is about their hometown. They continued their slow and steady build throughout the track, while Berninger’s lyrics seem full of sorrow and nostalgia, exuding a melancholy nature that sinks deep into the skin.

Berninger’s ballads drip with emotion and are inherently revealing, especially in “Afraid of Everyone,” where the singer expresses the challenges of his social anxiety.
“I don’t have the drugs to sort it out.” However, as the band weaves through the verses, the austere melody piques into a regal rock rhythm that picks the crowd up in its wake.

This formula seems to circuit throughout their repertoire, at least on this evening. With lyrics conveying emotional obstacles, politics or the typical working man, juxtaposed with scintillating riffs, the first label that come to mind is grunge-emo; although mope rock is apropos. Still, over the course of 20 songs, including a four song encore, the tunes connect into an epically moving and tranquil, yet grandiose performance.