Home » Features » The Alcott

The Alcott

First Two Pages of Frankenstein (The National Album) | 2023

“The Alcott” is an upcoming collaboration between Taylor and The National on the band’s ninth studio album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein. The song will be released on April 28, 2023. Set to a sparse backdrop of piano and strings, the song finds Matt Berninger and Taylor inhabiting the roles of a couple attempting to resurrect a troubled relationship.
Table of Contents

Background and Recording

After the release of I Am Easy to Find (2019) and the cancellation of The National’s touring as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the band members retreated from each other. During that time, Aaron Dessner produced two of Taylor’s albums, folklore (2020) and evermore (2020), and became one of her most trusted collaborators. He also recorded How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? (2021), the second studio album with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon as part of their side-project Big Red Machine. Taylor features on two of the songs, “Renegade” and “Birch“.

“The Alcott” marks the second collaboration between Taylor and The National. The band was previously featured on “coney island” from evermore. Multiple members of the band had notably also worked on folklore, which Taylor was ecstatic about; The National is one of her favorite bands. “Taylor can sing any National song word for word, pretty much,” Aaron told The New Yorker in April 2023. Taylor herself said:

«My love for The National stems from the lyricism and the soundscapes the band creates to perfectly compliment them. There are so many lines in their songs that are disturbingly, courageously truthful. I’ll always marvel at how their lyrics have the ability to express such stark darkness and wistful romanticism at the same time. There’s also such a synergy to the deadpan spoken-word quality of Matt’s vocals and the vistas the band is creating around him. That entire verse in ‘I Need My Girl’ where he’s talking about her losing her shit, driving the car into the garden and then apologizing to the vines. It really sums up what sets them apart. They set an entire scene.»

Taylor Swift
First Two Pages of Frankenstein came after a period when lead singer Matt Berninger was in “a very dark spot where I couldn’t come up with lyrics or melodies at all. Even though we’d always been anxious whenever we were working on a record, this was the first time it ever felt like maybe things really had come to an end.” Bryce Dessner noted that eventually, the band “managed to come back together and approach everything from a different angle, and because of that we arrived at what feels like a new era for the band.” Aaron Dessner added, “To me, the power of this record has to do with the intentionality and structure of the music meeting with a lot of accidental magic.”

Lyrical Theme

Set to a gorgeously sparse backdrop of piano and strings, “The Alcott” finds Matt Berninger and Taylor inhabiting the roles of a couple attempting to resurrect a troubled relationship, forging a finely drawn story nearly novelistic in scope. In an interview on The Zane Lowe Show, Berninger shared that he wrote the song about his wife and frequent collaborator, Carin Besser:

«It’s about two people with a long history returning to a place and trying to relive a certain moment in time. It’s got the feeling of a last-ditch effort to hold onto the relationship, but there’s a hint of something positive where you can see the beginnings of a reconnection.»

Matt Berninger
The song eventually took the form of a pensive yet luminous duet between him and Taylor. Matt Berninger added: “I was imagining a scene—a contained moment and narrative between two people. Someone meeting someone at a place they used to hang out, or maybe the other person wasn’t expecting them, but knew they’d be there. It’s just two people that maybe have a chance to reconnect and maybe they don’t. I wrote and I sent it to Aaron, and when he sent Taylor a few things, she heard that one and was able to instantly get into the mindset of the person I was talking about. So she wrote all her stuff as a response to me, and very much from the perspective of my wife, who I was writing about. So when Carin heard that one, and heard Taylor Swift embodying her character in a song, writing responses to me, that was really fun for everybody. It was a really cool moment. It was like walking down a path and thinking you’re alone, and all of a sudden somebody appears out of nowhere and joins you on this path.” Aaron Dessner similiarly recounted to Alt 104.5:

«Matt wrote the main part of the song to some music I had written which Taylor had heard and I knew liked, so I thought it might be something she would really click with. I sent it to her, and was a little nervous as I didn't hear back for 20 minutes or so. By the time she responded, Taylor had written all her parts and recorded a voice memo with the lyrics she’d added in a dialogue with Matt, and everyone fell immediately in love with it. It felt meant to be.»

Aaron Dessner

Critical Reception

“The Alcott” received acclaim from music critics. Writing for The Atlantic, Spencer Kornhaber wrote: “Now it appears that Swift may have pushed the men of The National in new directions too. On the band’s latest album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein, out in April, Swift’s influence feels pervasive. It’s not just her voice, which she lends to the lilting track ‘The Alcott’; she seems to have taught them something about the mode of candid self-expression that she has mastered. In so doing, The National and Taylor Swift have become one of the unlikeliest and most productive synergies in contemporary music — the cross-pollination of a gloomy indie-rock fraternity and proudly sentimental, stadium-charming pop.”

Lyrics

[Verse 1: Matt Berninger]
I’d get myself twisted in threads to meet you at the Alcott
I’d go to the corner in the back where you’d always be
There you are, sitting as usual with your golden notebook
Writing something about someone who used to be me

[Chorus 1: Matt Berninger & Taylor Swift]
And the last thing you wanted
Is the first thing I do
I tell you my problems
You tell me the truth
It’s the last thing you wanted
It’s the first thing I do
I tell you that I think I’m falling back in love with you

[Verse 2: Matt Berninger]
I sit there silently, waiting for you to look up
I see you smile when you see it’s me
I had to do something to break into your golden thinking
How many times will I do this and you’ll still believe?

[Chorus 2: Matt Berninger & Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift]
It’s the last thing you wanted (Tell me, which side are you on, dear?)
Is the first thing you do (Give me some tips to forget you)
You tell me your problems (Have I become one of your problems)
I tell you the truth (Could it be easy this once?)
It’s the last thing you wanted (Everything that’s mine is a land mine)
It’s the first thing I do (Did my love aid and abet you?)
I tell you that I think I’m falling back in love with you

[Bridge: Matt Berninger, Taylor Swift]
And I’ll ruin it all over
I’ll ruin it for you
I’ll ruin it all over and over
Like I always do (Why don’t you?)
I’ll ruin it all over (Rain on my parade)
I’ll ruin it for you (Shred my evening gown)
I’ll ruin it all over and over (Read my sentence out loud)
Like I always do (‘Cause I love this curse on our house)

[Final Chorus: Matt Berninger & Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift]
It’s the last thing I wanted (Tell me, which side are you on, dear?)
Is the first thing I do (Give me some tips to forget you)
I tell you my problems (Have I become one of your problems)
And you tell me the truth (Could it be easy this once?)
It’s the last thing I wanted (Everything that’s mine is a land mine)
It’s the first thing I do (Did my love aid and abet you?)
I tell you that I think I’m falling back in love
Back in love with you

[Outro: Taylor Swift]
Back in love with you

First Two Pages of Frankenstein (The National, 2023)
General Information
AlbumFirst Two Pages of Frankenstein
FeatureTaylor Swift
ReleasedApril 28, 2023
Recorded2020-2022
StudioLong Pond (Hudson Valley)
GenreAlternative
Length4:27
Label4AD
SongwritersTaylor Swift
Matt Berninger
Aaron Dessner
ProducerThe National
FIRST TWO PAGES OF FRANKENSTEIN CHRONOLOGY
AlienThe AlcottGrease In Your Hair
Teaser
The Alcott Teaser (The National, 2023)
Lyric Video
Official Audio
Related Content

coney island

Read more

Discography

Videography

Wiki

Search