Photo credit: CJ Foeckler
National concerts used to be an annual event in Milwaukee. Between their mid-’00s rise and their 2013 album Trouble Will Find Me, the indie-rock band swung through the city repeatedly, and their shows usually followed a similar template: Singer Matt Berninger would take the stage, crisp and dignified—a silhouette of a white, middle-class ideal—then, gradually, he’d lose that composure, rumpling his suit and scorching his prized voice as he convulsed across the stage. It never got old, because it never played out quite the same way. The ratio of regality to volatility at any given show depended on the night, the material they were touring behind and, to no small extent, Berninger’s wine consumption.
These days, the band’s shows aren’t quite so temperamental, but they’re still a spectacle. Touring as a seven-piece with a pair of auxiliary musicians whose trumpet and trombones periodically drove their songs to climax, the band returned to Milwaukee for the first time in five years Monday night at the Riverside Theater with a beefed-up stage design that included an elaborate video display. At times, the show felt like a throwback to the big rock tours of the ’90s, like R.E.M.’s Monster tour or U2’s Zoo TV, and Berninger’s lanky dancing and pantomimed lyrics channeled Michael Stipe even more than usual.
The concert’s beefy production complemented the album they’re touring behind, 2017’s Sleep Well Beast, a nervier, busier expansion of their sound. It’s an impressive album—a little overworked, at times, but still grounded in the same magnificent songwriting that’s always been the band’s calling card.
All the show’s bluster and fury, the strobing lights and frenzied guitars, never detracted from the night’s real attraction: Berninger himself. There isn’t a singer quite like him. With his hangdog posture, restless delivery and burnt-caramel voice, he’s a magnetic presence, and even though he rarely raises his voice into the red zone anymore, he still knows how to work his audience into a lather, as he demonstrated when he hopped off stage and wandered deep into the crowd during “Graceless” or let the fans do most of the yelling for him during “Terrible Love” and “Mr. November.” Even when he isn’t showboating, Berninger recites songs he’s sung hundreds of times before like he’s still scouring them for undiscovered meaning. It’s a credit to how rich his writing is that he often finds it.
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