The National have announced plans to release a new live album.
Entitled ‘Rome’, the 21-track digital and double vinyl LP set was recorded live on June 3 this year at the Italian city’s Cavea at Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone.
The release, which is mixed by longtime collaborator Peter Katis, will also come in a tricolour triple-LP featuring five additional songs to complete the 26-song set on coloured vinyl, available via the band’s Cherry Tree fan club. It is out on December 13 and can be pre-ordered here.
As a taster, the band have shared four tracks from the record today (September 23) on a new EP entitled ‘NTL RM EP I’ which features the tracks ‘I Need My Girl’, ‘Lemonworld’, ‘The Geese of Beverly Road’ and ‘Lit Up’. You can listen to them below.
Other live tracks set to feature on ‘Rome’ include ‘The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness’, ‘England’ and ‘Fake Empire’ plus more recent tracks including ‘Eucalyptus’, ‘New Order T-Shirt’, ‘Tropic Morning News’ and ‘Smoke Detector’.
The full tracklisting for the digital/double LP version of ‘Rome’ is as follows:
1. ‘Runaway’
2. ‘Eucalyptus’
3. ‘Tropic Morning News’
4. ‘New Order T-Shirt’
5. ‘Don’t Swallow The Cap’
6. ‘Bloodbuzz Ohio’
7. ‘The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness’
8. ‘I Need My Girl’
9. ‘Lemonworld’
10. ‘The Geese Of Beverly Road’
11. ‘Lit Up’
12. ‘Alien’
13. ‘Humiliation’
14. ‘Murder Me Rachael’
15. ‘England’
16. ‘Graceless’
17. ‘Fake Empire’
18. ‘Smoke Detector’
19. ‘Mr November’
20. ‘Terrible Love’
21. ‘Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks’
Elsewhere, the band recently told NME that they are in a “very creative space” and are in the “gardening phase” of writing new material.
The band dropped two albums in 2023 – ‘The First Two Pages Of Frankenstein‘ and ‘Laugh Track‘ – but this hasn’t stopped new ideas from gestating.
“There’s a lot of music, so that means a lot of new music for us to play,” bassist Scott Devendorf told NME at Glastonbury. “We’ve really tried to mix up the setlist a lot and try to be more dynamic in that way just because it’s interesting for everyone.”
Asked if there’s more music to come from that universe, Matt Berninger said: “No, we kind of purged ourselves. Once we started writing again, I wrote almost everything that was in the folders and made a song out of everything. Now the folders are filling up. I’ve been writing a lot, but I think we’re just gonna take it nice and slow. The garden is full of seeds. But we don’t know when it’s gonna start to bloom or anything like that. We’re in a very creative space – we’re in a gardening phase. Gardening at night!”
The National are currently on their ‘Zen Diagram’ tour with The War On Drugs in the US.
They will be performing at the United Center in Chicago tomorrow (September 24) with further stops planned in Michigan, Utah, Seattle, plus various dates in Canada before the jaunt wraps up in Los Angeles and Mexico City in October.
Visit here to buy tickets and check out a full list of upcoming shows below.
SEPTEMBER
24 – CHICAGO, United Center
25 – STERLING HEIGHTS, Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre at Freedom Hill
26 – MADISON, Breese Stevens Field
28 – ENGLEWOOD, Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre
29 – SALT LAKE CITY, Granary Live
OCTOBER
1 – SEATTLE, Climate Pledge Arena
2 – VANCOUVER, Pepsi Live at Rogers Arena
3 – PORTLAND, Moda Center
5 – NAPA, The Mertage
6 – BERKELEY, The Greek Theatre
7 – LOS ANGELES, Hollywood Bowl
10 – MEXICO CITY, Palacio De Los Deportes
