Sublime National live up to the hype on Leeside

“Sorrow found me when I was young, Sorrow waited, sorrow won.”

So begins the song that The National recently played for six hours straight — that’s 108 times in a row — at MoMA PS1, the Queens outpost of the NYC modern art museum.

So playing a couple of hours for us at the Marquee should be a doddle.

The presence and the passion of these five guys from Ohio and the utter intensity with which they interact with their material is mesmerising.

This is their only Irish date of the summer and it was the fastest selling show of the Marquee — all tickets gobbled up by lunchtime on the day of release.

They’re selective in their tour dates and after last night’s tour-de-force, we can only be grateful that they came to the Cork.

But then, Cork is great, to be fair, like.

The show was sublime. Lanky, looming, morose Matt Berninger drinks his wine and winds the entire tent into his world of lyrical longing.

“I still owe money to the money to the money I owe,” he croons on “Bloodbuzz Ohio”.

I hear ya, Matt, boy, I hear ya.

His baritone voices weaves its magic, with the two pairs of brothers, Aaron and Bryce Dessner and Scott and Bryan Devendorf ascending him to the exalted.

Together since 1999, The National have tenaciously and inevitably climbed and climbed from their first album The National through to 2005’s Alligator and the brilliant Boxer in 2007, High Violet in 2010 and now with Trouble Will Find Me transforming from underground stars to fully-fledged rock stars. For me, the highlight last night in that towering tent was the exquisite Fake Empire.

So Matt, let you and the boys “tiptoe through our shiny city with your diamond slippers on” any time you want.

And come back soon, ya hear?

5/5