The National have reportedly finished recording new album, the follow up to 2017’s ‘Sleep Well Beast.’

The news comes after the band’s longtime producer Peter Katis’ management company, Worlds End, appeared to confirm that he’d finished mixing the record earlier this month in a now-deleted news release on their website.

Katis has worked on the majority of The National’s records since their second album, 2003’s ‘Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers.’ His work has featured on ‘Cherry Tree’ (2004), ‘Alligator’ (2005), ‘Boxer’ (2007), ‘High Violet’ (2010) and ‘Trouble Will Find Me’ (2013).


Katis produced The National’s 2017 album ‘Sleep Well Beast’ which went on to win the group a Grammy for Best Alternative Music.

Speaking to NME in 2018, the band confirmed that they were halfway to completing their follow up to ‘Sleep Well Beast’ and were just awaiting rewrites and tweaking from Matt Berninger.

The band said the new record would be partly made up from material garnered from ‘Sleep Well Beast’ sessions and partly something completely different.

Drummer Bryan Devendorf described their next effort as a “departure record” – and then some. “It’s going to be more than just a record,” he continued. “The other material that’s accompanying it is basically inspiring the record. It’s a collaborative project. I’ve said too much already…

“It’s not a big deal, it’s just different to everything else we’ve done. There’s a new element to it. That’s why Matt is rewriting everything.”

Berninger went on to add that the subject matter of his songs are usually the same. Adding, “What else are people thinking about other than sex, death and losing?”


But he admitted that since he’d been writing music for a TV show and also a musical, titled ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’, he’d also been getting into the mindset of writing from other people’s perspectives.

He added, “I’ve been writing more from the perspective of other people, and the one big one is Cyrano de Bergerac. To get inside those characters has been a fun way to look at things from a different side and turn the binoculars backwards.”

Over the last few months, The National have confirmed huge tour dates across the summer.

In the UK, they’ll be supporting Florence and The Machine at Hyde Park as part of British Summer Time, before their own headline slots at Castlefield Bowl in Manchester and Kelvingrove Bandstand in Glasgow. Elsewhere, they’re set to play Mad Cool festival in Madrid.

In November, the band appeared on a special Thanksgiving episode on Bob’s Burgers, where they’re seen rescuing a turkey.

Tickets for The National are available here.

NME has contacted a representative for The National for comment.