Album Review: The National - Trouble Will Find Me

It seems to be a general consensus these days that if you remain in the same genre or style for too long, you risk becoming staid, unimaginative, boring. Iconic Ohio collective The National were on the verge of emotional and spiritual collapse, banging their figurative heads against a brick wall of audience complacency and indifference, before breaking through with 2005's excellent Alligator. Subsequent albums Boxer (2007) and High Violet (2010) have seen their profile grow exponentially, while refining and expanding the template that garnered them such critical and commercial praise.

Trouble Will Find Me continues this carefully calibrated move forward, and as such is their most assured, awe-inspiring set of songs yet. Born from guitarist Aaron Dessner's late-night musical sketches made while embracing the trials and tribulations of a newborn daughter, the album ebbs and flows with beauty and chagrin. Opener I Should Live In Salt stirs the requisite amount of starry souls, while follow-up Demons sees singer Matt Berringer's vocals scrape the baritone lows, a sonorous MOR chugger that still manages to swell with pregnant intent. Don't Swallow The Cap takes romantic New Wave rhythmic drives and marries them to Berringer's broken croon – he's still torn between love and loss (“Everything I love is on the table/Everything I love is out to sea…To the bone I'm evergreen/I'm tired”). The charging Sea Of Love is overwhelming, a simple yet effective song that soars on a wave of unfettered confidence.

And so it goes. Every song is worth a mention, because every song complements the next. Trouble Will Find Me isn't The National's first success story – but it is their most effortless.