For 20 years as the frontman and vocalist of the National, Matt Berninger has created narratives of people haunted by their own undeserved success. How, he seems to ask, can one so blinkered make art that reflects anything besides themselves? On “Serpentine Prison,” Berninger’s first release as a solo artist, he considers the question anew. On its surface, the song seems to deal with sobriety; he describes having a “pretty hard time without drugs, without love,” and the titular prison is the kind of place that’s inaccessible to friends and family: “Sorry, I’m fishin’ without permission/Tell her I’m missing in a serpentine prison.” Berninger’s narrator isn’t just contending with addiction; their mind is flooded by headlines from a world on the brink of destruction.

Producer and famed multi-instrumentalist Booker T. Jones surrounds Berninger with ornamental instrumentation, allowing gently picked guitar and funereal horns to provide the backdrop for his dark ruminations. Sparse organ notes make the tale feel more immediate; it’s like hearing a longtime denizen of a backroom bar muttering to the strains of a country ballad on the jukebox. Berninger draws a paranoid portrait of a parent in a world that seems ready to devour its inhabitants. “I walk into walls and I lay awake/I don’t wanna give it to my daughter,” he sings. It’s a sentimental message from a prisoner within his own mind.