The National Brace Themselves for Gig at London Landmark

You know you've arrived when you can add the Royal Albert Hall to the list of venues your band has played. London's grandest venue may be best known for hosting the BBC's Proms classical concerts, but its place in rock's hall of fame is also assured. Bob Dylan to Nick Cave, Cream to Spiritualized, Noel Gallagher to Massive Attack -- the hall has seen them all.

So you'll excuse the National if they have sweaty palms right about now. The band announced the show there earlier this year, around the time of the announcement forthcoming album 'High Violet' was nearly with us. On Thursday, they'll take to this most famous of stages with no small amount of nerves.

And the band's frontman Matt Berninger tells Spinner there was a moment the Ohio-via-Brooklyn band thought they might have overreached themselves.

"We thought it was a big leap and thought, 'Is that smart?' and then it sold out in five minutes," he says.

The band's Aaron Dessner adds, "I think our audience here is hard to gauge. We played a show here at the Royal Festival Hall and that sold out in like a minute. It's hard to say what's the real leap. I would say the Royal Albert Hall is a leap, but it doesn't seem to be a leap as far as what our audience is right now. We've gotten used to playing theatres now – it used to be 'Woah, there's seats, what are we going to do?'"

Not that the National believe for a minute that they have become household names. Their star may have risen in earnest since 2005's 'Alligator,' but to many, they're still a mystery.

"I was just asked a couple of days ago, 'How does an underground, unknown band sell out the Albert Hall?' And it was a funny question, it was a legitimate question," says Berninger. "On a broad level, we are underground, we're not high-profile. But on the blogs, and the message boards, and friends telling friends, and the back-alley whispers we've become a huge band. This person really didn't know anything about us, didn't know what we looked like, or how many people there were in the band."

The band will be able to calm some of those nerves with Wednesday's warm-up show at the Electric Ballroom in Camden. Berninger, however the gig turns out, is in a philosophical mood. "If we broke up the day the show we could always say we did that and our grandkids would know we did that, it's significant, it's totally cool and we're very thankful." There's a slight pause. "I'm going to need to knock on some wood."