I just have to say it: right now, in this particular moment of my life, The National is my favorite band. Why? As I stated in my list of favorite albums of 2017, while talking of the band’s previous release, Sleep Well Beast, The National are experts at delivering a message through music, whatever that message may be and that delivery hasn’t changed a lot in the past 20 years. But it is the little twitches both in songwriting and composition that make every new album from the band worth not only a listen, but a deep immerssion in their particular brand of indie rock. In I Am Easy To Find, the twitch is a big one.

Several women share the vocal credits with Matt Berninger, and collaborators, between orchestral musicians and a complete youth chorus, are more than 70. This not only delivers an album that is ambitious in its sound but one that considerably subverts The National’s past aesthetic, mainly in the vocal part. Berninger’s voice has always had the quality of being the unmistakable part of the band’s music, so when it is constantly accompained and sometimes substituted with not one but at least five female voices, the change stands-out as a particularly bold one. Furthermore, its masterful execution helps a lot at not sounding like they just invited people to sing-along to their melancholic tunes.

As back-up vocalists the female guests embellish songs like opener ‘You had Your Soul With You’ which has an astounding bridge with David Bowie’s former bandmate Gail Ann Dorsey, and give a new edge to tracks like ‘Oblivions’ which Berninger shares with guitarist Bryce Dessner’s wife, Mina Tindle. In album highlight ‘Not In Kansas’, a brooding ballad with some of Matt Berninger’s best verses, Dorsey, Kate Stables and Lisa Hannigan’s voices serve as the emotional uplifting that comes in the refrain.

However, it’s when they take the spotlight when the album really feels different. Hannigan is the main voice in ‘The Pull Of You’ one of the most charasteristic sounding songs of the bunch. English singer Eve Owen leads the propulsive ‘Where Is Her Head’, where Berninger sings only in the bridge, and Kate Stables lends her voice to the excellent title track, while Berninger accompanies her with his low register baritone. All this voices, and all this moments are produced to really reflect on how The National can sound, and the album is elevated by them. Shoutout to ‘Rylan’ and its deserved studio version that pretty much summarizes the band’s last ten years, its verse sung by Kate Stables and its addictive chorus being particular highlights. 

Lyrically, I Am Easy To Find, moves in familiar territory, without losing Matt Berninger’s particular middle-age melancholy. He finds solace in solitude and confort in companionship, and yet there’s still a middle ground that torments him and fills him with uncertainty. In his stream of consciousness in ‘Not In Kansas’ the only thing he repeats is: ‘I am not in Kansas/Where I am, I don’t know where’ and despite sounding like a techincal contradiction to the title track, where he and Stables sing: ‘I’m still standing in the same place where you left me standing/I am easy to find’, both thoughts find him in the same position with each pulling to the opposite side of the other. The album’s general feel of claustrophobia is somehow liberated with closer ‘Light Years’ the most beautiful and straight-forward song of the album. When Berninger sings: ‘And I will always be/light years, light years away from you’ it stands out as a simple but tough deliberation that simultaneously frees the album and finishes it in a calm note.

Whatever The National intended in I Am Easy To Find, it feels earned. The album may not be full with highlights and at times the songs succumb under the weight of the experimental passages, instrumentation sometimes getting in the way of emotion, and some songs feel like they have too much, specially in an album as ambitious as this one. However, the record is a solid statement of what the band is capable of in arrangement, production and musicianship and it is a deserved and somewhat unexpected ending to another fruitful decade for one of the longest running and beloved bands in 21st century’s (indie) rock.