I Am Easy to Find

I Am Easy to Find is littered with these ambitious flourishes, all of which add up to make a much broader and more pointed statement of offbeat intent.

The centre of gravity around which they've always spun, the human heart of Berninger's lyrics that was always caked under middle-class anxiety and "quote-unquote upscale tropical funeral" surrealism, has never been easier to find. This tension between open-heartedness and discursive, tangential songwriting--let's call it the distance between simplicity and complexity, for closure's sake--is the paradox on which this album is built, and to that brilliant balancing act you can always return when it feels like it's losing the thread.

The National have put out another album that could easily be argued as their best--and it may be easier to make that claim now than ever before.

I Am Easy To Find feels like a restart for a band in its 20th year. It might challenge some fans and may not ever grow on others, but more than anything, it proves that the National are not the band you thought they were. They're way more than that.

The nature of the project is in a way their own noble experiment, ultimately finding them at their boldest and most assured to date.

The album's triumph is in shoring up our capacity to keep searching, making sense of the chaos and loving no matter what, summed up beautifully in the end with "There's a million battles that I'm never gonna win anyway/I'm still waiting for you every night with ticker tape, ticker tape." It can't be a celebration each time, but in surmounting failings large and minute, this eighth National album posits, sometimes it should be.

A record imbued with the distance between people and places, the impermanence of stories and emotions, and one that finds it ever so hard to stay in one place for too long. ... It’s a damn fine National album.

While the National have been transformed and enhanced by the tendrils of connection that have grown out into a wider world here with this bold and remarkable series of collaborations and joint ventures, they also remain their essential selves.

By allowing their diligently designed blueprint to take a new, unexpected form, the National haven’t ceded the spotlight, only broadened it.

The National prove with I Am Easy To Find that they don’t need the old bang and clatter to achieve their signature melancholic glory.

What first makes the record baffling is also what makes it fascinating, as the band toes the line between experimentation and self-sabotage. They wring maximum potential from bizarre ideas.

The whole record works best less as a collection of songs than a sustained mood piece: its moves uptempo (Where Is Her Head, Rylan) are tempered by the stillness that surrounds them. The music burbles, without ever insisting. The lyrics (credited to Berninger, his wife Carin Besser, and Mike Mills, the film director who’s also listed as a co-producer) are both allusive and grounded.

It would be rash to immediately start writing The National’s obituary, but this really does sounds like the band is preparing to wind down, for a period at least. It seems like we’re really no closer to answering that first question. Where do The National go from here? It could be a while before we find out.

Where once they relied on builds with big payouts, the soundscapes conjured on I Am Easy to Find harness restraint so effectively, instead of reveling in the melodies that champion the vocal riches over the intricate layering of guitars, Bryan Devendorf’s iconic rhythms and the space between everything. Even at 64 minutes, it’s a record that never feels bloated.

They’re never going to knock you down with their raw power. But, like the Midwestern cities of southwestern Ohio that birthed them ... you’ll find a lot of beauty if you stick around long enough.

At a sprawling 16 tracks and 63 minutes long, the only thing I Am Easy To Find suffers from is its sombre and pensive pace, without the feral release that certain fans of ‘Boxer’ or ‘Alligator’ might long for.

On I Am Easy to Find, another standard-bearing indie dude brand has reconfigured itself with multiple women’s voices at the LP’s core, a portion of the roughly 77 musicians that temporarily explode the band’s quintet. ... They pull it off without diluting their National-ness.

With new voices, new avenues of exploration and new lyrical viewpoints, The National, alongside producer-director Mike Mills, once again show their ability to reinvent themselves to produce something that is more than just an album.

There’s plenty here to push The National’s sound forwards and stave off stagnation.

[It takes a while] for the songs to emerge out of the mist. When they do, they stand among the band's best work. [Jul 2019, p.104]

One does eventually feel the album’s length, with the stretch of songs in between “You Left Your Soul with You” and “I Am Easy to Find” feeling comparatively pedestrian—the sounds of a band treading more familiar ground before really staring to take chances. But once they do, the sprawl quickly begins to justify itself, revealing some of the most ambitious music the National has ever made.

Ultimately, it's a record filled with beauty that tries to do what therapy does: sort through a mess of emotions and reorganise them into something that makes more sense. [Jun 2019, p.84]

The relentless mid-tempos at times make this epic 16-track album drag, but on the devastating "Not In Kansas" and the frantic "Where Is Her Head" Berninger once again proves himself rock's most astute and humane chronicler of everyday crises of faith. [Jun 2019, p.32]

At 68 minutes long and 16 tracks, its length becomes an issue during a third quarter which drifts. But as an exercise in breaking with consistency, I Am Easy To Find shows The National remain open to new possibilities after all.

Although the album is the band’s biggest yet, with a cast of dozens including 13 violinists alone, it rarely feels bulky. Only the too-Arcade-Fire-for-comfort “Where Is Her Head” succumbs to grandiosity, prioritizing spectacle over purpose.

I Am Easy to Find has loose ends and picturesque detours in addition to a revolving cast of characters and a suggestion of mess that give the album an appealingly unkempt sense of humanity.

With its 16 tracks clocking in at 63 minutes, it’s the band’s longest album to date and, despite a smattering of classy highlights, it feels laboured and cumbersome. With that in mind, the album as a whole falls short of The National’s best work. Yet it is, in places, an admirable detour.

The National had an incredible streak of great albums throughout the 2000s that propelled them to their current status as one of the biggest indie rock bands, and I Am Easy to Find is another solid addition to their catalog, even if it breaks that streak.

I Am Easy to Find feels like an old friend you’re pleased to keep around--even if, had you been introduced today, you wonder if you’d have been compelled to make the effort.

This is bold, weird, beautiful stuff, but the listener has their work cut out getting to it. Ironically, the core of I Am Easy to Find is not particularly easy to find. At all.

The arrangements only rarely bring out the drama in these interactions. The intimacy becomes wearying, with spoken-word interludes, interstitial pieces and hushed vocals stretching the 16 songs to 64 minutes, an experiment in search of a direction. The most radical album of the National’s career is also its most disappointing.

A strangely flat album.