Rating: 2.5 / 5
According to Aaron Dessner, founding member of The National, the material they had created for First Two Pages of Frankenstein was too broad to limit themselves to one album.
“The truth is we had more than 30 really good songs going into First Two Pages of Frankenstein. Last year we were on tour in London, and I said, “It really needs to be two albums, because how can we possibly choose?” said Dessner in an interview with Esquire.
As understandable as it is for bands to love the music they create to the point where they fail to scrap songs, it is hard, and sometimes impossible, to defend these creative decisions. Unfortunately, Laugh Track fully encapsulates that dynamic.
Rarely enthusiastic over its own existence, Laugh Track’s sluggish demeanour struggles to capture the listener’s attention enough to stay for the duration of the album. Repeatedly listening to the album in hopes of distinguishing one song from the other will also not get anyone very far.
It’s not as if mellow albums equate any less substance in the music – in fact, many contemporary artists, such as Lana Del Rey, successfully and purposefully implement softer sounds in their discography. The caveat is that leaning on slower tempos without careful thought can often result in lifeless songs, as in the case for a majority of tracks on Laugh Track.
To clarify, the songs in Laugh Track are not intrinsically terrible — but that is not particularly a positive thing either for The National. One can turn to songs in the album, such as “Crumble (feat. Rosanne Cash)” or “Smoke Detector” to see that The National has not fully lost touch and awareness for what rock music should sound like. These moments of awareness are few and far between on Laugh Track, seeing as most songs lack an it factor that would entice a listener to revisit the songs in the album.
Surprisingly, many of the more palatable songs in Laugh Track happen to include features, which bring a slight edge of freshness to the record. Tracks such as “Weird Goodbyes (feat. Bon Iver)” and “Laugh Track (feat. Phoebe Bridgers)” bring out a more riveting shift to the record, but it is hard to say that they have any staying power in one’s mind. Bon Iver and Phoebe Bridgers masterfully intertwine their respective vocal performances with the voice of lead singer Matt Berninger, but they cannot fully compensate for the dullness in production that The National created for the respective tracks.
The poorly thought-out choice of releasing Laugh Track shortly after the release of First Two Pages of Frankenstein only seems like a desperate effort from the band to hold on to B-side tracks that the band grew to love. Perhaps regrouping the best songs on each of the albums, while giving others a warm but needed goodbye would have made for a stronger body of work.