The National have played their first full gig in two years, bringing out Richard Reed Parry as a special guest and playing ‘90-Mile Water Wall’ for the first time in over a decade. Find footage and the setlist below.
The gig marked their first full-band concert since 2024, and was held last night (Sunday October 18) at the closing night of AB100 at the Kursaal Auditorium in San Sebastián.
Billed as ‘The National And Friends’, the performance was their only full-band show of this year and featured a variety of special guests as well as some deep cuts.
The 22-song set opened with back-to-back renditions of ‘Humiliation’, ‘This Is the Last Time’ and ‘Don’t Swallow the Cap’, and it was during the performance of ‘Lemonworld’ – taken from their fifth studio album ‘High Violet’ – that the band introduced multi-instrumentalist, composer and Arcade Fire member Richard Reed Parry to the stage as a surprise guest.
The collaboration comes as Reed Parry worked with The National on that 2010 album, contributing double bass, guitar and vocal harmonies for songs including ‘Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks’, ‘Conversation 16’ and ‘Sorrow’. He also worked with The National on their 2013 album ‘Trouble Will Find Me’.
After The National performed ‘The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness’ and ‘Runaway’, Reed Parry returned to help perform ‘Bloodbuzz Ohio’, and soon afterwards, Matt Berninger and co. broke out the first live performance of their 2003 track ‘90-Mile Water Wall’ since 2014.
The band also performed ‘Sorrow’ twice on the night, once with the usual band members, and once alongside contemporary performance and visual artist Ragnar Kjartansson. The two have previously worked together in 2013, when they united to launch a performance art piece and video installation in New York called A Lot Of Sorrow.
Songs performed later in the set included ‘Oblivions’, ‘Smoke Detector’, ‘Terrible Love’ and ‘About Today’, and the encore was comprised of ‘Once Upon a Poolside’ and ‘ Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks’.
The National’s setlist was:
‘Humiliation’
‘This Is the Last Time’
‘Don’t Swallow the Cap’
‘I Should Live in Salt’
‘Mistaken for Strangers’
‘Lemonworld’ (with Richard Reed Parry)
‘The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness’
‘Runaway’
‘Bloodbuzz Ohio’ (with Richard Reed Parry)
‘90-Mile Water Wall’ (first time since 2014)
‘Sorrow’
‘Sorrow’ (with Ragnar Kjartansson) (again)
‘Pink Rabbits’
‘Oblivions’
‘Smoke Detector’
‘Light Years’
‘England’
‘Fake Empire’
‘Terrible Love’
‘About Today’
Encore:
‘Once Upon a Poolside’
‘Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks’
The night came after band members Matt Berninger and twin brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner performed at the Atabal venue in Biarritz the night prior (Saturday October 17), as part of the AB100 festival celebrating the brothers’ 50th birthdays.
For that show, the brothers were joined by a rotating cast of musicians, including Ben Howard, Kevin Morby and Jon Hopkins. They were also joined by R.E.M.‘s Michael Stipe, as they came together to sing ‘E-Bow The Letter’, originally released as the lead single from R.E.M.’s 1996 album ‘New Adventures In Hi-Fi’.
The National have a long history with Stipe and R.E.M., having supported the latter on their North American tour in 2008, alongside Modest Mouse. Stipe has also worked directly with Aaron Dessner, with the pair releasing the collaborative single ‘No Time For Love Like Now’ in 2020.
Earlier this month, members of The National performed without Berninger in Germany, playing an 11-song set alongside guests including Victoria Canal, Ye Vagabonds, Gail Ann Dorsey.
The band’s most recent studio album was 2023’s ‘Laugh Track’, which followed ‘First Two Pages Of Frankenstein’ earlier that year. Speaking in 2024, they told NME that they were in a “very creative space” and in the “gardening phase” of writing new material.
Since then, Berninger has released a solo album, ‘Get Sunk‘. He also spoke to NME in 2025 about the meaning of the record. “It’s just saying, ‘Everything’s going to be OK, fuck it all, you’ve only got a short time to live on this little tiny speck of dust in all the emptiness and all that will be left is your ideas. Your face will be gone, your bones will be gone, your Jeep will be gone, your Grammy will be gone, everything will be gone’,” he said.
“All that will be left are the ideas that you left – and that can be the kindness with which you raised your kids, the kind words you said to a total stranger, that minute you decided not to give someone the finger, that fight you decided not to have. Were you kind? Were you brave? I’m a bad memory for a lot of people, of course I will be. I hope I’m mostly a good memory.
Aaron Dessner has also worked on a number of albums including Mumford & Sons‘ ‘Prizefighter‘, and Gracie Abrams‘ ‘The Secret Of Us’ and ‘Daughter From Hell‘, Florence + The Machine‘s ‘Everybody Scream‘ and Brandi Carlile‘s ‘Returning To Myself’ in recent years.
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