Watch The National’s Matt Berninger cover Nirvana’s ‘All Apologies’ and New Order’s ‘Blue Monday

The National frontman Matt Berninger has covered classic tracks by Nirvana and New Order during his current tour. Watch below.

• READ MORE: Matt Berninger: All that’s left when you’re gone are your ideas

The singer-songwriter is out on the road in support of his second solo album ‘Get Sunk’, which was released today (May 30).

Berninger swapped out his recent rendition of Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ in his show’s encore for a take on ‘All Apologies’ – the last track on Nirvana’s third and final studio record, ‘In Utero’.

He remained largely faithful to the 1993 song as he dipped his toe into the grunge world alongside his live band. Tune in here:

At a later gig, Berninger put an energetic spin on New Order’s 1983 synth-pop hit ‘Blue Monday’. The singer-songwriter did away with the single’s electronic sound – recreating its galloping, iconic drum beat on an acoustic kit.

Other recent shows have seen the artist deliver covers of Tom Petty‘s ‘Only A Broken Heart’ and Tom Waits‘ ‘(Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night’.

The National previously paid homage to New Order on their track ‘New Order T-Shirt’, which appears on the band’s 2023 album ‘First Two Pages Of Frankenstein’.

During a new interview with NME about ‘Get Sunk’, Berninger explained: “I’ve got Kurt Cobain’s notebooks and he was drawing jets and demons and people barfing and cigarette packets, then these incredible lyrics that are going to the centre of his soul – next to a joke or a dick n’ balls.”

This came as he discussed the vast amount of work he needs to process: “I have boxes of notebooks and you open every page and they look kinda like the baseballs – these goofy little planets of scribbles, different colours, lyrics all over the place.”

As for the message behind his new solo LP, he told NME: “It’s just saying, ‘Everything’s going to be OK, fuck it all, you’ve only got a short time to live on this little tiny speck of dust in all the emptiness and all that will be left is your ideas. Your face will be gone, your bones will be gone, your Jeep will be gone, your Grammy will be gone, everything will be gone’.”

Berninger continued: “All that will be left are the ideas that you left – and that can be the kindness with which you raised your kids, the kind words you said to a total stranger, that minute you decided not to give someone the finger, that fight you decided not to have. Were you kind? Were you brave? I’m a bad memory for a lot of people, of course I will be. I hope I’m mostly a good memory.”

The musician embarked on a run of intimate UK live shows and Q&A events recently, and will return to these shores for a headline tour this summer. Find any remaining tickets here.

The post Watch The National’s Matt Berninger cover Nirvana’s ‘All Apologies’ and New Order’s ‘Blue Monday appeared first on NME.