The National talk Bob Dylan & Roy Orbison influences on new album

With their new, and sixth, full-length coming out next month, The National had already spoken of the more relaxed feelings surrounding the LP. In their initial press release they said they wanted to “disprove (their) own insecurities” while feeling that they “didn’t have to prove our identity any longer”. And now the group’s singer Matt Berninger has spoken in a new interview about how they have stops worrying about being “boring white guys”.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, Berninger is quoted as saying “When we started, we weren’t exactly a cool band like The Strokes or Interpol. For years, we tried to prove we weren’t boring white guys. This time around, we didn’t have to prove anything. We thought, ‘Let’s not worry if a song is cool or edgy’.”

He goes on to discuss a few of the influences on the new record, comparing track ‘Heavenfaced’ to Roy Orbison. Elsewhere, Bryce Dessner describes the impact that listening to Simon and Garfunkel and Bob Dylan have had on the LP: ”That’s the music we grew up on and listened to. So we accessed some of that classic songwriting.”

Trouble Will Find Me will released on 20 May in Europe (21 May in North America). It follows on from 2010′s brilliant High Violet.