If the last time you engaged with Matt Berninger’s songwriting was through the most recent National albums, Get Sunk’s backstory and overarching mood will sound familiar. In 2020, the frontman struggled with a long period of writer’s block and depression that informed 2023’s First Two Pages of Frankenstein and its surprise companion, Laugh Track. But while Berninger’s second solo album, the follow-up to his gorgeously refined 2020 debut Serpentine Prison, emerged from a similar headspace, the sinking here happens deeper in his subconscious, words slipping out of the blurry space of memory, sleepiness, or a complete breakdown. Working with producer Sean O’Brien and a cast of musicians including Booker T Jones, Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), and Julia Laws (Ronboy), he keeps himself right on the edge. The results are more dynamic and less carefully gracious than Serpentine Prison, which makes it a sea worth diving into, even if you know, more or less, exactly what you’re gonna get. You can stare at one thing forever – it’s nothing till you feel it rush through your bones.
1. Inland Ocean
Emotionless and serene, ‘Inland Ocean’ manages to feel like the perfect opening, a blank canvas lit up by its surroundings. Berninger begs for an embrace, if only the kind that feels like drowning deeper: “Wrap me up and bury me.” Softened by backing vocals from Julia Laws (aka Ronboy) and echo-drenched instrumentation, he eventually undresses his grief from metaphor: “Everything ends before I want it to/ I needed more time alone with you.” Ripples of organ, harmonica, and keyboard attempt to make something out of nothing, Sterling Laws’ drums almost splashing through the surface.
2. No Love
In a creative drought, a single piano chord can be enough to dredge up real feeling – “a sinking,” in this case. As Nick Lloyd keeps it ringing, Berninger confesses, “The music’s so unromantic,” steering clear of possessive implications before adding, “Our eyeballs are red and dry/ It doesn’t have anything to do with anything/ The vibes aren’t right.” When “No one can tell what the difference is/ Between spine and fame,” you can’t only blame yourself for burrowing inward.
3. Bonnet of Pins
‘Bonnet of Pins’ is a hell of a lead single, but it also makes Get Sunk come alive: the arrangement is instantly more dynamic, Berninger’s lyrics armed with detail, his performance emotionally heightened while leaving room for the live rendition. The subject is an encounter with an old flame, and you can feel his eyes burning through his voice, whether he’s observing (“She sidewinders through the room to me/ With a real cigarette and a Styrofoam coffee”) or accusing (“The closest thing she’s ever found to love/ Is the kind you can’t get rid of fast enough”). “This stuff takes a lifetime,” he offers, and this kind of song can stay with you just the same.
4. Frozen Oranges
Hungry for focus, Berninger finds refuge in the Indiana of his childhood: “I could concentrate in a place like this.” Instead he finds himself drifting off into memory, with Kyle Resnick’s trumpet helping to shape its surreal nature. The sense of innocence, however illusory, clears the spit of the last two songs.
5. Breaking Into Acting feat. Hand Habits
On the surface, ‘Breaking Into Acting’ is built out of another accusation: your emotion – forgiveness, per Berninger’s press statement, though it’s not clear or relevant in the song – is feigned. But the heart of it, made palpable by Hand Habits’ tender guest vocals, is empathetic. “I completely understand,” they sing, recognizing the truth in, or succeeding, the performance. He’s too well-versed in its language not to.
6. Nowhere Special
Berninger’s baritone slides down feverishly: “I’ll slur my city words into the mind grinder microphone/ My skull isn’t soft anymore, it has cracks in it like a floor,” he intones. It’s less drunken confession than its poetic unraveling, one layer behind actual speech, slipping and lurching off rhythm and towards some kind of understanding – glimpsed in lines like “I want to believe in this one little fantasy” and “You know what? I love you.” You might call it stream-of-consciousness. For him, it’s “non-thinking thinking,” the kind that runs through your bloodstream.
7. Little by Little
In a smart trick of sequencing, the narrator seems to address the character on the previous song, a parental figure: “Can’t tell what they’re saying, always pacing always praying.” It frames the grief of the song as intergenerational, following the titular phrase with lines like “you don’t come around“ and “turn into dust and dreams.” It doesn’t pack the same punch as Berninger’s best, but it gets the point across. Little by little, you learn to let go.
8. Junk
Co-written with The Walkmen’s Paul Maroon, ‘Junk’ marries self-deprecation with romantic surrender, with Berninger’s delivery and the slightly whimsical arrangement carrying just the right amount of lightness. “I’m only junk,” he sings, somehow, as an invitation, half-rhyming it with love – and only half-joking.
9. Silver Jeep
It feels like much of the album has been striking for this moment of concentrated writing; as effective as Berninger’s dreamier, hazier songs can be, we’re now several tracks away from the clarity of ‘Bonnet of Pins’ and ‘Breaking Into Acting’, and ‘Silver Jeep’ is ambiguous yet narratively intriguing. It gives Ronboy, a lingering presence in the background of Get Sunk, a much-deserved moment in the spotlight as the woman “out there somewhere in a silver Jeep,” and she packs so much in those few words she sings out on her own: “I only want you to rattle my bones and run.” It leaves you wanting a bigger chunk of the story, but it’s all in the rearview; or worse still, a mirage.
10. Times of Difficulty
If you’re anything like me, you never want to hear the phrase “these difficult times” again. Worse still, strange. But ‘Times of Difficulty’ is a song I wouldn’t mind hearing several more times, not least because it’s ultimately less isolating than instructive, by way of group vocals: “Get drunk! Get sunk! Forget! Get wet!” There is no these because Berninger understands our confinement as a perpetual cycle, not a temporary blip. That works well for his metaphors. “I’ll think of you if you think of me,” he sings, “The way the sky thinks of the sea .” That how might still be a mystery, but it gives you an idea of how long – more than a lifetime, even. Which is certainly not unromantic.
