THE NATIONAL - Trouble Will Find Me (2013), listen #1

Coming in, basically what I knew about Trouble Will Find Me was that at least a certain subset of music listeners think that the National peaked with the Boxer/High Violet era, and that Trouble was 55 minutes long.  The obvious fear, especially given that this is a band that would release two records in 2023 that snarky critics think contain one good record's worth of material between them, is that the National will get bloated with age.  So, is this record too much of an okay thing?  On first listen, I don't think so.  I have to say, on first listen, this is pretty solid.

I got about four tracks in before my attention started to wander at all, after the first three songs ranged from solid to great.  And let's just get the negativity (not that there's much) out of the way: only one moment in sequential order made the record's length seem a little oppressive.  "Slipped" seems almost like it could be a melancholy closing track, and it fades out, and in comes "I Need My Girl" with its slow pace and its lyrics being straightforward to the point of banal, and there were still a few tracks left.  So, that's it.  That's the only time I was bored.  (It's worth noting that otherwise the record is sequenced very well.  In particular, I like the way the descending melody and intensity of the end of "This Is The Last Time" lead into the more energetic "Graceless" with its high notes on the rhymes.  Also, coming after "I Need My Girl," the instrumentation including what sounds like an accordion or something of "Humiliation" is a breath of fresh air.)

We've established ad nauseam that I like my rock music to rock.  The usual way I ask for that to happen is for the singer to raise his voice at the heavy parts so the listener/singer-along-er can release energy together with it.  Going up on the scale during the high notes is kind of the logical way to do it.  Matt throws me a bone here and there, like on ""Sea Of Love."  But this band also punctuates the big moments in other ways.  The lyrics can convey longing and almost reaching out for notes that the vocalist refuses to hit (at least at first), like in "Don't Swallow The Cap."  The song can go down in resignation when it "should" go up, like once "This Is The Last Time" shifts into the "Jenny, I am in trouble" section.  You can, of course, have a swelling of instruments and voices under the vocal melody even if that stays the same, and they do that a bunch as usual.  And of course, there are always those counterpoint vocal parts, either as a contrast to the previous melody or as something to play over it.  Often with multiple vocalists, as we see again on "Don't Swallow The Cap" and various others.  It may be obvious from this paragraph that I don't really know the tunes well enough yet to talk in depth about any of this, so, suffice to say that first impression is positive.  I noticed a surprising variety in how they're able to build their songs to emphasize the parts requiring emphasis.  Generally it's really pleasing how, despite Trouble being a record of thirteen songs that almost all start basic and build to a swelling climax, the specific directions that songs went still felt surprising, on multiple occasions.  This record has a lot of potential, for me.

Other thoughts:

) The National came to lean into the guest musicians more heavily than I expected, somehow.  Rather than going electronic to enrich their sound, they're one of those bands that seemingly has strings as a key component of every song.  That or an oboe (I think), which provides one of the main musical lines on "I Should Live In Salt."  Even the stripped down numbers like "Heavenfaced" are heavily built around strings.  I'd suggest that Padma Newsome should basically be an official member of the group at this point, except that he's only one of about fifteen people playing strings, winds, trombones, and so on at various times on Trouble Will Find Me.  

)  Has Matt been listening to a lot of rap?  This record he seems bigger on the two-line setup -> punchline schemes than usual.  I don't know how else to explain  "I'm under the gun again/I know I was a forty-five percenter then" from "I Need My Girl."

)  As far as favorite lyrics, I'll have to dive into the salt song again to see if the writing is as good as I imagined.  Meanwhile, I get a kick out of the band celebrating being people who ought to know better than to write about being fixated on someone by writing "This Is The Last Time," a song whose narrator theoretically knows better than to be fixated on someone.

Favorite track:  "This Is The Last Time"

Runner up:  "Don't Swallow The Cap"

Least favorite:  "I Need My Girl"

Incredibly preliminary rating:  4/5

(On the one hand, that seems a little high, but my first impressions of Trouble are at least as good as my first impressions of Boxer, so let's go with it.)

Thoughts on listen #2 whenever I get around to it!