Album Review: The National - I Am Easy To Find

If you’re not familiar with The National, we’d advise you to start with Boxer. Then if you’re after something a little more raw, High Violet. A little more produced? Trouble Will Find Me. Synthy? Sleep Well Beast. Promise us you’ll give them more than one listen – we're talking about growers here. It’s a hallmark quality that has endeared The National to so many, soundtracking everything from tender Sunday morning moments to red wine-fuelled debauchery. 

So where then does I Am Easy To Find slot into the mix? Some fans have speculated it’s a companion piece to Trouble Will Find Me and, with its similar artwork and motifs, they wouldn’t be too far off. In true conspiracy fashion, both albums even have 17 May as their release date. Whoa. 

But this is an album that asks a broader question: what does it mean to be human? It is a grand statement in the same way it is not a grand statement. It finds beauty in the monotonous and banal, in unwashed dishes and nights spent in front of the television. Yes, there are the autobiographical moments we have come to expect from Matt Berninger and frequent lyrical collaborator, his wife Carin Besser – look for the inner monologue moment in Not In Kansas – but they're just part of the album's inherent humanness.  

There’s a variety of female vocals in the mix for the first time; most notable Bowie’s longtime collaborator Gail Ann Dorsey. This choir of voices help to reinforce that these are universal themes, universal problems, universal growth.

The tender moments on the album – Quiet Light, Light Years, Roman Holiday – are bound to please fans of I Need My Girl-era National. Eve Owen’s floating vocals over the skittering drums and urgent strings in Where Is Her Head grab you immediately. When Berninger comes in with a frenzied, “I think I’m hittin' a wall/I hate loving you as much as I do,” we feel our ribcages cracking open, hearts beating bloody on the floor.

Dating back over a decade, the presence of Rylan in the accompanying film's trailer – the film was directed by noted auteur Mike Mills – was enough to send longtime fans into a tizzy. The reenergised version found on the album is a stadium anthem if anything – more Dessner wizardry well worth the wait. Mills’ film, starring Alicia Vikander, and the album don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand however. They are, as Mills suggests, “playfully hostile siblings that love to steal from each other”. Or as Berninger writes, “featherless ideas… and at the end it was a turkey”.  

Much like the fact we are the sum of our parts, this is an album that speaks volumes as a whole. It is a singular apocalypse. Music that, once again, gets inside your bones, laying down roots. So while questions of humanness might be too vast for a 68-minute runtime, here’s to long drives with Berninger’s baritone soundtracking our individual search for answers.