Vinyl Record

The National - First Two Pages Of Frankenstein

The National - First Two Pages Of Frankenstein album cover

The National - First Two Pages Of Frankenstein on LP vinyl. A 2023 rock album built around quiet tension and bruised melody, available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel, Ireland.

LP ยท 2023

Available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel.

Buyer notes: 2023 LP, currently available from the Kilmorna Collection vinyl shelf. Pay for pickup in Listowel or ship within Ireland for EUR 5.50.

First Two Pages Of Frankenstein is The National's 2023 album of hesitation, repair and returning to the sentence after the sentence has stopped coming. Arriving four years after I Am Easy To Find, it sounds deliberately smaller in gesture than that sprawling collaborative project, but not less serious. The record was shaped around Long Pond and around a band trying to make stillness speak: piano figures, soft electronic pulses, guitar parts that hang back, and drums that often work like memory rather than impact. Once Upon a Poolside brings Sufjan Stevens into the doorway, Eucalyptus turns shared possessions into emotional evidence, New Order T-Shirt makes nostalgia feel both tender and incriminating, and The Alcott places Taylor Swift inside the band's grown-up theatre of unfinished conversations. Phoebe Bridgers' appearances deepen the ghostly edge of This Isn't Helping and Your Mind Is Not Your Friend. The album is not The National roaring back; it is The National admitting that even an established language has to be rebuilt when the person holding it has gone quiet.

The album matters because it documents The National after a period when their familiar machinery could no longer simply be assumed. In 2023, with major guest voices around them and a softer centre of gravity, they made a record about blockage, loyalty and survival that treats recovery as slow craft rather than triumph.

For collectors, this is the first half of The National's unusually productive 2023 chapter, best understood beside Laugh Track. It is quieter, more fragile and more piano-led than many earlier favourites, but that restraint is the point: it preserves a late-career band taking the risk of sounding uncertain on purpose.

Quiet late-period indie rock with piano-led arrangements, muted electronics, brushed rhythm, guest harmonies, low-lit vocals and an atmosphere of careful emotional reconstruction.

Recommended for: The National listeners drawn to their gentler late-period songs; Collectors following the band's two-album 2023 arc; Fans of reflective indie rock with notable guest vocals.

When was First Two Pages Of Frankenstein released? It was released in 2023 as The National's ninth studio album. Who guests on First Two Pages Of Frankenstein? The album includes guest appearances from Sufjan Stevens, Phoebe Bridgers and Taylor Swift. How does it compare with Laugh Track? First Two Pages Of Frankenstein is generally more hushed and inward, while Laugh Track often feels looser, more live-tested and more expansive.