The National has released the fourth and final offering ahead of its upcoming album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein (out April 28th via 4AD), the idyllic “Your Mind Is Not Your Friend” featuring Phoebe Bridgers.
The track confronts the entanglements of the habitual mind and the overwhelming nature of scrutiny. “Don’t you understand? / Your mind is not your friend again / It takes you by the hand/ And leaves you nowhere,” frontman Matt Berninger croons in tandem with the distinct grace and haunting nature of Bridgers’ vocals.
The song emerged during a period of writer’s block for Berninger – a challenge he partially overcame with the help of Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein. “When I feel stuck, I’ll often grab a book off the shelf just to get some words in my head, and the first two pages of Frankenstein ended up triggering ‘Your Mind Is Not Your Friend,’” Berninger recalls. “The book starts off with the narrator on a voyage near the Arctic Circle, and that image of being adrift helped me to write about feeling disconnected and lost and lacking in purpose. Once I started confronting that strange, blurry panic of not having ideas, everything began to crack open a bit.”
The wistful, nostalgic video for “Your Mind Is Not Your Friend” stars Matt’s brother Tom, familiar to fans of The National from his 2014 film about the band, Mistaken For Strangers. Extending the sibling theme, the clip was directed by Jackson Bridgers, Phoebe’s brother, and filmed at locations around Los Angeles.
