The National rocks Grammy Week show at Irving Plaza

The last time The National played the area, the alt-rockers sold out Forest Hills Stadium. The tour before that it packed the Barclays Center.

But this is Grammy Week, where music stars and special secret concerts collide at every turn, and Thursday night the Grammy-nominated rockers were playing the intimate Irving Plaza, as part of the Citi Sound Vault Presents series. Eminem is set to perform there Friday. Childish Gambino will take the stage there Saturday, the night before he competes in the Grammys’ top categories at Madison Square Garden. And Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds will close out the series on Sunday.

The National singer Matt Berninger made the most of performing in such a small space, jumping into the crowd and sharing the mic with some fans so that they could scream together. He even told the story of the last time he was at Irving Plaza, seeing indie-rock legends Guided by Voices and getting hit with a beer can thrown across the club by the band’s singer Robert Pollard. Throughout the concert, he tossed drinks into the crowd, but they didn’t go as far.

Berninger brought some of Pollard’s onstage fire into the band’s nearly two-hour set, drawn mainly from its Grammy-nominated “Sleep Well Beast” album, with the great “Guilty Party” turning into a sing-along. He dedicated the angry “Turtleneck,” about the 2016 election, to Donald Duck, though he was probably thinking of another Donald, especially when he paired it with the raging “Mr. November,” from the band’s 2005 breakout album “Alligator.”

Though New York generally has plenty of star-studded parties, Grammy Week has raised the intensity. The parties and tributes, including Friday night’s MusicCares tribute to Fleetwood Mac and Saturday night’s party celebrating top Grammy nominee Jay-Z, are all part of the ancillary events that come with the awards ceremony. They are part of the reason the city estimates the Grammys will bring in around $200 million in revenue this week and why Mayor Bill de Blasio hopes it will not be another 15 years until they return again.