A love letter to The National at the start of its world tour

If you are looking for a review, this isn’t it. This is an appreciation for a band that helped one of your best friends get through his divorce by listening to “Boxer” on repeat; a band whose music made your new city feel like home; a band whose songs helped you through one of the toughest times in your own life.

On Thursday, The National launched its tour with a four-night run at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, opening with the quiet and gorgeous “Once Upon a Poolside” from its newest and ninth album “First Two Pages of Frankenstein.” You still saw the playful and charismatic lead singer Matt Berninger joking with the band, a powerful performance of "England" and a set that felt loose and comfortable, like you were just invited over to listen. But 20 years after they first hit the road, The National felt like it had grown up.

You don’t go see The National for stage theatrics or choreography, though you will enjoy the mesmerizing grainy video accompanying the show and Berninger’s dance moves that remind you he is a writer.

You go see The National because you love the band. If BTS has its Army, The National has its “sad dads,” a nod to its middle-aged band members and melancholy songs about angst and loss. And there were plenty of middle-aged men in their “Sad Dad” sweatshirts before the show, lining up to buy more band merch, but if you think that the grown-up hipster is the band’s only fanbase, you missed almost half the people at the show.

You go because even though you’ve seen The National play to much bigger crowds, and you know guitarist/writer/frequent Taylor Swift collaborator Aaron Dessner played an acoustic version of “The Great War” in front of 66,000 people on her tour in Tampa, the band is at its best in a smaller venue. The Auditorium holds about 3,800 people.

You go because even though you heard a rumor that the band would play in its hometown of Cincinnati – and now your home – sometime this fall, you didn’t want to wait.

See photos from The National's Tour opener on its Instagram account

You go because Berninger is equally good with the lyrical “About Today” as he is at screaming “Graceless.”

You go because they make you feel young again. The band, who met in Cincinnati, formed in Brooklyn in the late 1990s. Now they feel like grown-up hipsters and you, too, have grown up, even if you were never hip. After 20 songs, the crowd still feels energetic and excited on its feet as they cheer for an encore just before 10 p.m., but most of them sit down for it, perhaps realizing we still need to get up for work tomorrow.

You go because while you had liked the band for almost a decade, you didn’t see them live until your second summer in Cincinnati, a place where I had moved with my then husband and four kids. That July night, before The National came on stage during the Bunbury Music Festival, a storm rolled and rain came down so hard, I thought they’d never play. Everyone was soaked.

And then there on the banks of the Ohio River, along with that friend who credits “Boxer” with surviving his divorce and his then new girlfriend, the skies cleared, the band took the stage. And somewhere between “Bloodbuzz Ohio” and “Mr. November,” I felt like I was home.

You go because these five guys, including two sets of brothers (Bryan and Scott Devendorf, Bryce and Aaron Dessner, and Berninger), have stayed together for two decades, through marriages, moves, and eight children. You go because somehow reading about Berninger’s depression in a beautiful piece in The New Yorker and the struggle to create the newest album is inspiring in the way you feel when you see people get through difficult things.

You go because three years ago you were writing a memoir about the hardest time in your life, including your mom’s suicide, and somehow listening to The National each night as you wrote, helped you hit your publisher’s deadline. “It takes an ocean not to break,” lyric from “Terrible Love” became a sort of mantra, and somehow writing about the worst part of your life helped make you better.

You go because sometimes you need to experience art to be inspired, because work is both exciting and complicated and maybe even weird right now, and life can feel heavy even in the best of times.

You go because you learned during the pandemic that there is nothing like hearing your favorite band with people who love them as much as you do. You go because hearing the songs that you wrote a book listening to, songs that helped your friend through the hardest of times, remind you of how much art matters. And that music can inspire and change you, too.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The National world tour review