A few months ago, before The National released their new album Sleep Well Beast, they teased that the album might be weird. They ultimately lived up to that promise with the record’s music videos so far: There’s the photonegative “Carin At The Liquor Store” video, a frenetic time-lapse clip for “Day I Die,” and now they’ve shared a video for “I’ll Still Destroy You,” which features the band performing with confetti and a male sailor stripper at a pop-up bar in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The video was directed by Allan Sigurðsson and Icelandic performance and installation artist Ragnar Kjartansson, the latter of whom The National previously worked with for “A Lot Of Sorrow,” a 2013 event where the band performed the song “Sorrow” for six hours straight.
The filming process sounds like it was pretty bizarre: The video was shot in one hour at Dope & Korruption, a pop-up bar created by Kjartansson in Copenhagen that offered “arancini, chocolate truffles, prosecco, classical music and a sailor striptease,” according to a press release. Apparently things got a little too nuts for Danish security officials, who shut the bar down during the shoot. Also, Dope & Korruption was also destroyed the day after.
Watch the video for “I’ll Still Destroy You” above, revisit our interview with the band here, and listen to the Celebration Rock podcast episode about Sleep Well Beast here.
