In 2023, after ten years of living in Los Angeles, Berninger (along with his wife and teenage daughter) moved to Connecticut. This change of scene suited him; he began to spend his days outside, painting, reading, smoking weed and listening to music, much of it his own. He wrote lyrics all over old baseballs, and arranged dust-covered items in his barn into strange and surreal works of art. It felt good to be creating and to understand why he loves what he does. 

Throughout his work with The National, Berninger is known for his contemplative narratives in which characters peer over the cliff’s edge. He has always been forthcoming about his own mental and emotional pitfalls. “Our heart’s are like old wells filled with pennies and worms,” he explains. “I can’t resist going down to the bottom of mine to see what else is there. But sometimes you can get yourself stuck.” In 2020 he went through “a long period of writer’s block and self-disgust. I just got sick of of asking myself ‘Why am I like this?’” For him, identity is amorphous and ever-evolving, and stretches beyond individuality. This is the driving force of his second solo album Get Sunk. Under water, everything moves in slow motion and Berninger saw his creative voice slipping away. But sometimes we have to drown to remember how to breathe. Get Sunk is the inhale, bringing blurry realizations to the surface.

Berninger worked with Grammy Award-winning producer and engineer Sean O’Brien. The pair would get together once a week to “fuck around for five or six hours.” The sonic world blossomed with the help of of friends and musicians, including Booker T Jones, Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), Julia Laws (Ronboy), Kyle Resnick (The National), Garret Lang, Sterling Laws, Mike Brewer (Nancy), Walter Martin (Walkmen), Paul Maroon (Walkmen) and Harrison Whitford to name a few. Some recorded individual parts, most recorded together in a basement with Berninger. 

The collection of songs spans the last few years, but Berninger re-recorded vocals and rewrote lyrics for many of the older compositions. “I got my voice back, so I needed to say something new,” he explains. Inspired by the flora and fauna of his new home, he recalled his childhood on the edge of Ohio, and spending summers on his aunt and uncle’s farm in Indiana with his five cousins. They would hike in creeks, cracking open “crystal apples” (a Berninger term for geodes) surrounded by Osage orange trees and dirt, dust and bugs. They harvested Christmas trees and tobacco––Berninger admits he’s loved nicotine since first chewing on a tobacco plant when he was 12––and camped out. On one particular freezing night, Berninger kept close to the fire and woke to find the soles of his shoes sizzling blue-violet.