Name: The National’s Matt Berninger: Get Sunk | You Made It Weird
Uploaded: 2025-05-28T14:00:10.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The National’s Matt Berninger: Get Sunk | You Made It Weird' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-05-28. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The National’s Matt Berninger: Get Sunk | You Made It Weird' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-05-28. Transcript available.

The National’s Matt Berninger: Get Sunk | You Made It Weird

You made it weird, yes you did, you made it weird, yeah. You made it weird,
with Pete Holmes. Yes you did, you made it weird, yeah.
What's happening weirdos? I am thrilled to announce that this is the return of
Matt Berninger, the frontman and singer and lyricist for The National, which
fans of this show will know that's my favorite band in the world.
And Matt is also one of my dearest friends, and I'm so glad that he's back, and
we chat, and we get into a lot of very interesting things, one of which is his
new solo record, Get Sunk, which comes out this Friday on May 30th.
So if you're hearing this anytime after May 30th, after this pod, during this
pod, instead of this pod, listen to Get Sunk on whatever, whomever you get your
music.
It's so good. It's such a great record. Everything Matt does is great. El Vi,
Serpentine Prison, obviously The National, and now Get Sunk.
So check that out. It is my current music obsession. It is a masterpiece. I
love it so much, and we're so glad that you're here.
Let's get to this chat as quickly as possible. Only going to plug.
Well, Nashville, I think, is mostly sold out, and thank you to all of my
Tennessee weirdos for coming out to Nashville this weekend.
Irvine, California is next, followed by San Jose, California.
Los Angeles, we have our Largo once a month.
Houston, Royal Oak, Michigan.
D.C., Boston.
Sorry, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Spokane, Washington.
St. Louis, Missouri.
Cleveland, Homestead, and Atlantic City.
New York will be announced very soon around that date as well, and we're so
glad you're here.
Get into it.
I mean, oops, I already said get into it.
Matt Berninger, Get Sunk.
This episode, get into it.
Did I say all those tickets were available at PeteHolmes.com?
This intro is all over the place.
Get into it.
We don't normally say this, but I am sitting here with Matt Berninger, and I am,
well, we're dear friends, but there's another side of it.
I got a little coconut water on my...
You may.
Our sponsors at Vita Cocoa will be thrilled.
Vita Cocoa.
They'll clip it.
They'll clip.
Rockstar spills our delicious beverage.
Into beard.
Into beard.
Remarks.
My beard has never tasted so sweet.
I was going to say that, and you know this, there's another facet of our
relationship, which is I'm just a huge fan.
So I'm always so excited to talk to you.
Yeah.
Well, I'm...
Ditto.
I was going to say, this is not where I hit the ball to you to say.
No, no, I know you were using, you were using like Mistaken for Strangers and
Mr.
I can't remember, it's not like opening your sets.
Oh, yeah.
I walk out to Mr. November now.
Now that it's Mr. November, yeah.
The new special, the new tour, every tour, there's kind of like a new national
song that I walk out to.
No, it's cool.
I love it.
And we did Mr. November.
Yeah, of course.
And you guys are always so wonderful.
But I love it.
I really love it.
And you haven't...
Let's get it out right at the top for the people who just dip into this podcast
and then realize they don't like my grading personality.
So we'll get it out right up top.
There's a new solo record.
There's a new solo album.
Matt Burner's solo album.
What's it called?
Get Sunk.
I think I knew that.
I just wasn't positive.
Because I'm listening to it on the preview and it just says...
Well, Meg Duffy, they're on the record and they were talking about it and they
were calling the record Bonnet of Pins because that's a single.
And a lot of people think that the record is called Get Sunk.
But yeah, so you and Meg are both wrong.
Yeah.
But yeah, Get Sunk is the name.
Well, we were saying you have another solo record.
I'm a Matt Berninger completionist.
I love Elvai.
I think Elvai is fantastic.
Of course, every national record.
And I love Serpentine Prison.
I listened to...
That was like my pandemic record.
It was like Lila was like one...
Mine too, yeah.
I could put it on Serpentine Prison just on a loop and kind of drive her around
and like chill.
Yeah.
So I have real memories with that album.
That record for me was my...
I mean, making it was...
The intention for Serpentine Prison was to make a soothing record because it
was...
It is.
Yeah, and...
And we're kind of getting into the difference with Get Sunk.
Sorry to jump in, but like...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Get Sunk rocks.
It's like rocks.
Yeah, this is more of a...
I would say this is more of like a me being me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
A me being me.
Although Serpentine Prison absolutely was too.
And I think...
I mean, I really...
The reason I even made that record and started even writing songs was because I
wanted to
make a record like Willie Nelson's Stardust, which was the record in my
childhood.
And still when I put it on, I'm just comforted by it.
Because my mom and my dad would be...
I could hear my dad singing along, or my mom singing along that record when I
hear that.
And I had a really happy, lovely, wonderful childhood in that record.
So I would have been...
And I have a daughter now.
She's 16 now.
But when I made Serpentine Prison, she was 10 or when I started writing or even
maybe
nine when I started working on that stuff.
And I really wanted to make a record like that for her, kind of, in a way.
And for myself.
That's so cool.
Because The National has gone in lots of different branches of musical compass
turning this way
or that way.
But this one for Serpentine Prison, I definitely was dialed it a very specific
way, even to the
point where I got Booker T. Jones, who produced Stardust, to produce it.
And isn't that funny?
I drove around my daughter listening to it to chill.
Not to just zone out, but to feel nice.
I drove all around these neighborhoods, just that album on repeat.
There's a lot of darkness in that album, but I think kids really do respond to
dark themes
the same way kids...
I completely agree.
We watched Princess Bride yesterday, and I was trying to get her to watch it,
because
I love it.
And she was like, the one with the eels.
And I was like, funny.
Oh, yeah.
And then she goes, and the guy on fire.
So Andre the Giant being lit on fire and the eels is the reason why she wanted
to watch
it.
Yeah, yeah.
She's the coolest.
Yeah, yeah.
But keep going.
So there's dark stuff and kids killings and everything.
Sure.
And poisonings.
Yeah, yeah.
There's a lot.
But yeah, but even like, well, the song Serpentine Prison itself, it's such a
dark two words
together, right?
And I think I just wrote that down, because down in Venice, where I live, there
was a wall
that goes out in the ocean.
It's got a cage on the end of it, so that people can't go climbing out on it.
And it looks like a little jail on a curved cement platform.
It's just down by, near Manhattan Beach.
And I saw it one day, and I just wrote down Serpentine Prison.
But that song turned into very much a, yeah, it's a song about the traps we get
into, whether
our own traps or whatever.
But I really was writing that and thinking of it like a playful children's song.
There's so many rhymes in that.
And my daughter was really obsessed with that one particularly, just because of
all the rhymes.
And it was very, like there's a Dr. Seuss thing about that song particularly.
And kind of a play to it as well.
It's not taking itself too seriously.
That makes it sound like a silly song.
It's not a silly song, but it is having fun with life.
I would say Serpentine Prison has some silliness.
Has some silliness and some, yeah, I was definitely trying to write a record
that would both soothe
me and my daughter at the same time.
I mean, because we were spending all of our time driving around in school.
That's what we were doing.
I was with my daughter more than anybody during, I guess that's still the case.
But especially in that time.
So that's what Serpentine Prison kind of was.
And, but yeah, this new one is, and the truth is I kind of started writing some
of this new
stuff right after finishing Serpentine Prison, because I couldn't tour Serpentine
Prison.
No one could tour at all.
It was right in the lockdown.
And it came out just like weeks before the lockdown or something.
So yeah, so I started, there was nothing else to do.
Nobody could do anything.
But I was able to go to, you know, just 10 minutes from here to Silver Lake, to
Knob World
Studio and with Sean O'Brien, who I made Serpentine Prison with along with Booker
T.
He co-produced that.
And we just started cooking new things.
And all of Serpentine Prison, I also wrote with like eight different friends,
you know,
guys from the Walkman, guys from, you know, Scott from the National, Mike Brewer,
a bunch
of people, a lot of those people are back on a few songs on Serpentine Prison,
like Mike Brewer
and Walter Martin from Walkman, and Sean O'Brien, but Sean O'Brien wrote like
six of
these with me.
I'm telling you the whole story.
Yeah, it's great.
You mean musically or lyrically or both?
Just music.
Yeah.
Yeah, I write all the lyrics and melodies and all that stuff of everything I do,
but except
for when I'm, you know, on someone else's record on their song.
Except for Trouble Will Find Me.
No.
Well, well.
Oh, no, Sleep Well Bees.
No, no, I Am Easy to Find.
Corinne wrote a lot.
Yeah.
And then, and then there's some things that Mike Mills wrote the lyrics for on
I Am Easy
to Find.
That's the, that's the one where.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah.
But I don't even know if I sing those, but I, but so, but, but, but, but, you
know,
Serpentine Prison was this really collaborative thing with all these different
writers, but Get
Sunk, I started mostly just with Sean, and so six of the ten I wrote with him,
and then
Paul Maroon from Walkman I wrote one with.
I'm forgetting somebody.
That's okay.
But, but, so, so, we'll splice it in.
You'll be in a different outfit, and you'll go like, Todd, Martin.
We'll do this whole section, and I'll remember the fourth person.
No, it's fine, but yeah, so, so, so, so, so Get Sunk, you know, but we were
saying it.
It started about five years ago, and then I, and then, and then, but then I
stopped.
I just stopped everything.
I stopped writing everything for a while.
And I thought.
Was that the kind of crash?
Yeah, that was the crash.
Yeah, I was wondering if we were going to talk, because we've never talked
about it on,
is it something you talk about publicly?
I've talked about, yeah, a lot publicly.
And I have no problem talking about it.
That's very interesting.
I mean, the truth is, I, I, I enjoy talking about it, because I learned a lot
about that,
and I, and I've had some of the best, like, I, I, I had a long conversation
with David Letterman
about it all, and, and he's gone through really similar things.
Oh, really?
Yeah, like, really.
What would, what would you call it?
It's depression.
A depressive episode.
Sure, sure.
A depression.
But it was, you know, it was triggered by all these real things, and, and then
I think with
me, that, that whole, you know, not being able to, to get out there, not being
able to tour
Serpentine prison, not really being able to do anything, um, for a while was
nice, you know,
like home alone with family and, and, and so much time with, with my daughter.
But you had just started building that house.
Yeah, we, we, we had, we had been, we had been built, well, yeah, that's a
whole other.
Is that, was that not a, if, if I say anything we don't talk about, you just
take it out.
We'll talk about the house.
Yeah, I had been building a house for six years.
Well, you and I had a long conversation.
I forget what expression you use, but I think about it all the time.
Oh, the Sword of Damocles?
Is that what it is?
You put this, like, you, you buy something you can't afford unless you're
working a lot.
And then you're like, and then you're forced to stop working.
That's a heavy cost.
Yeah.
I was out on my skis on a bunch of stuff.
I didn't know that expression either.
So, I mean, I also had, like, all these, I had, I was, I was writing another Elbi
record.
I was, I was writing with a lot of different people for a lot of different
p