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06 February 2012
Astonishing. Just astonishing.
I suppose I should elaborate. The Long Count production is primarily the creation of The National's twin guitarists Aaron and Bryce Dessner - with input on lyrics from Matt Berninger, who also sang one of the parts in earlier productions. The Dessners had been thinking about writing a baseball inspired piece, but their collaborator, visual artist Matthew Ritchie, steered them along a somewhat different path when he regaled them with the Mayan creation myth, The Popol Vuh. The Popul Vuh tells of the struggles of hero twins Xbalanque and Hunahpu in a series of deadly games - including one which is baseball like. The connections resonated with the Dessners, and so the unsought trail was the one that was taken.
The Long Count is set in a time before time itself existed, and before it formally begins the sounds of a baseball game are piped into the auditorium, punctuated at long intervals with an intoned countdown to zero – which is when the Dessners take to the stage performing a tug of war over a symbolic guitar suspended mid-stage. As the guitar bounces on the floor the thought coalesces - was there ever a time when there was only a single guitar in the Dessner household? Tonight, though, they both have an instrument, and they play intertwined but different harmonies, the counterpoints being supported by the chamber orchestra which sits to one side of the stage. As they play weird, almost random, motions of light and colour move in chaotic patterns behind them. Strange masked figures appear - first Shara Worden, clad in an intricately patterned corte, who sings delicately as she crosses the stage. Then comes Tunde Adebimpe, as a Lord of Death, the master of the games, already tall but looming over events from a plinth. When he sings we're at the closest point to the territory of The National. Suddenly it's very clear where that band's most orchestrated songs - such as 'About Today' - have come from: here is that familiar hypnotic feeling, stemming from the interplay of the Dessners’ distinctive guitar playing, the classical instruments and Adebimpe's baritone. All at once everything just falls into place and the listener's remaining barriers are broken down and the music and the spectacle takes over. Kelley Deal also features prominently, her strident singing somewhat reminiscent of Nico - she also creates part of the back projected images as she scrapes at the floor with a sacrificial dagger as she crawls across the stage.
Ritual is a big part of the performance;- when the singers - particularly Shara Worden - move around the stage is with carefully choreographed ritual movements, as if they are walking along a sacred path. 
The deadly tests are symbolised by the brothers Dessner putting down their guitars and taking up baseball bats which they use to batter into shrieking life a guitar which is once more hung over the stage. The tests end with Adebimpe declaring forlornly "I will no longer play these games" as if Death has finally wearied of his endless victories.
Shara Worden returns to sing two more songs, one a strongly choral work, during which her voice floats lightly and just for a moment she looked out from her white halo like ice crystal mask and smiled, at once so natural, beautiful, eerie, mysterious and human. The heart misses a beat, and the soaring music traps one in that instant into a divine love. It's no small thing to draw in an audience so far that the senses dissolve and there is an acceptance that Gods are walking amongst mankind.
The penultimate movement is an extended orchestral section - 'Aheym' – which is a rhythmic success, as the world is created around the artists by stones falling behind them, first one spinning alone, then in twos and threes until in a countless multitude they whirl and eddy across the screens. As the final notes of 'The Long Count' (sung again by a now more restrained Kelley Deal) fade away a single voice intones "one" - the world has begun, time is moving forward, we have shifted from the countdown of the ending of the timeless epoch to the birth of a new creation - with the final note of music truly The Long Count has begun.
It's not really until the lights go up that just how intensely absorbing the performance has been becomes clear - the free flow of the back drop images from chaotic shapes to growing things to man's complex constructs both functional and artistic coupled with incredible music and perfect voices all meld together to make a significant whole. Astonishing. Just astonishing.
Apparently there is to be a recording released later this year - does this bode ill for The National? Probably not - flyers around The Barbican carried the reminder that they will be curating All Tomorrow's Parties 2012 this December (where incidentally all the elements to perform The Long Count will also be present). This side work is a bonus. A big bonus.