The National have released the single ‘Guilty Party’ off their forthcoming album Sleep Well Beast out on September 8th. Sleep Well Beast was produced by member Aaron Dessner with co-production by Bryce Dessner and Matt Berninger and recorded at Aaron’s Hudson Valley, NY studio, Long Pond. To celebrate the forthcoming album the band will be throwing a Guilty Party at a non-profit multidisciplinary arts centre in Hudson, NY,  Basilica Hudson on July 14th and 15th with a portion of ticket sales benefiting the centre. 

 Video artist Casey Reas will be contributing live projection mapping for the event. Reas also directed the video for single, ‘Guilty Party’. “The video is a dream about memory and the degradation of memory; it’s about distance in time and space,” says Reas. “Time moves forward, but then backward as memory. The image of the two-faced Roman god Janus, who can look into the past and future, is the core visual language.”

Last week in Paris and the UK, The National performed new material off the forthcoming album for audiences for the first time. Portions of their victorious main stage set at Glastonbury can be viewed via the BBC. NME said in reviewing the Glastonbury performance, "their set's only flaw: it just all ended too soon. But the impact they made was immense. They've played the long game, and they've won. It's time for the world's biggest cult band to become a whole new beast." 

The National will tour across the world in support of the album, kicking off in Cork, Ireland on September 16th. Highlights include Forest Hills Stadium in New York on October 6th, The Hollywood Bowl on October 11th and multiple night residencies in more than 10 cities across Europe and North America. No southern hemisphere dates have been revealed as yet.