Have you ever longed for The National to pull off the musical equivalent of Jean-Luc Godard's seemingly never ending single-tracking shot of a traffic jam from Weekend? Well you're in luck! The band will perform the song "Sorrow" from High Violet over and over again for six straight hours in a show at MoMA PS1 next month. MoMA says, "By stretching a single pop song into a day-long tour de force [Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansso] continues his explorations into the potential of repetitive performance to produce sculptural presence within sound." Or it's just a really good way to see how long it'll take to drive drummer Bryan Devendorf insane.
The National were recruited to the project by Kjartansson, who'll have them perform the live-loop as part of his piece, "A Lot of Sorrow." The event will take place on Sunday, May 5th from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. in MoMA PS1's VW Dome. The National wrote in a newsletter, "The Dome is small, so you'll have a chance to watch us perform for a few minutes at a time, but the audio will be audible in the courtyard, so you can hear what happens as we play 'Sorrow' again and again and again."
Tickets are available here for $15. In the meantime, let's start taking some guesses about what's going to happen: how many glasses of wine will singer Matt Berninger need to get through this? How many version will it take before they break out their Ramones tribute to the song? At what hour will the song transform into their version of "Jazz Odyssey"?
