Matt Berninger’s gloomy persona, which has defined The National’s albums, is brought to a new level on his solo debut “Serpentine Prison.”  His heavy baritone is the perfect device for these songs about anxiety, neediness and despair.

The album was intended to be a set of cover songs produced by Booker T. Jones but after encouragement from the soul music legend Berninger worked up a set of originals that are in the wheelhouse of The National but the attention to the most minute instrumental details is what sets it apart.

The album’s title song was inspired by a sewer pipe near LAX that drains into the ocean and is capped with a metal cage to keep in the prisoners he refers to. It’s an apt allegory for his abstract feelings of being trapped in a place he doesn’t want to be.

The songs on “Serpentine Prison” sound that they were inspired by the cover songs he was planning to do, perhaps answering the questions posed by them, and because of the meticulous production from Booker T, he’s created some classics of his own.

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