THE NATIONAL - I Am Easy To Find (2019), listen #1

Two general points that relate to the record before I make a few very preliminary comments about I Am Easy To Find - presumably a different person than the one who was so "Hard To Find" a couple records ago.*  First of all - yes, I know it's an obvious thing to say - art can only be partially divorced from the context in which it was first experienced.  I deliberately came into this record blind, knowing only that it's somehow connected to a short film of the same title and that it has a lot of duets with female vocalists.  [I'm now led to believe that some of the songs started as Sleep Well era outtakes and were used to track a film, and that the film then inspired more songs.]  Audiences listening to the record in 2019 would have known it was coming, would have known about the film and possibly seen it, and would have known who was performing on which track.  When you put something out into the world, though, it has to stand on its own.  Five years later, someone scrolling through records on a streaming service isn't going to be surrounded by the 2019 context, they're just going to see a record labeled as a National record next to all the other National records and will listen to it as a record.  This is the product that the band has chosen to put out into the world.  Accordingly, my "job" on this blog is to evaluate whether it holds up as a studio album, experienced with just my ear holes.  [As an aside, frustrating as it is for fans of bands who come to life live - and here I'm very specifically thinking of Pearl Jam - it's sad but inevitable that the studio records are your legacy.  Maybe the Dead can get away with being treated otherwise, but if someone wants to know "what is this 'Pearl Jam' thing about?" they won't listen to five different gigs and hear five completely different shows that each have their own character and flow, no matter how easy it may be to get access to the official live recordings.  They'll listen to a studio record, probably Ten, and hear it exactly how it was first recorded and produced, and judge the band by that.]

I'm not as self conscious as I was a few months ago about not really having much to say on first listen because, well, that's what you get.  It's one listen.  I'm not going to be able to specifically remember nuances of the songs the next day, just a general sense of how the record made me feel.   Now, I've kind of taken it for granted that bands need to have their music stand out, or else it won't even get multiple listens to grow on the listener.  Is it a fault if someone needs to listen to your thing four times before they get it?  Well, sure it is, right?  Right?  Thing is, while listening to another dense layered set of National songs, I started to wonder whether that's necessarily even true for artists in different phases of their career.   The 2019 National have a reputation that they can lean on in a way that the 2001 National didn't.  When you're a young newly signed (or unsigned) band, you have to have some sort of hook that grabs the listener, or else you won't stand out in a stack of CDs.**  Or maybe more to the point, stand out amongst the promo bin next to the twenty other records that the Pitchfork critic who could make your career was listening to that day.  Things are different now.  The National is a brand.  That brand has a built in audience willing to sit with each record for some time, and won't mind as much if it's over an hour long.  But the brand name also carries weight amongst the curious casuals.  Anyone listening to a National record in 2019 would know that a lot of people think that the National are a good band, and that their music is known for having layers, thus making even a new listener more inclined to give I Am Easy that second and third spin.  So maybe it doesn't even matter how readily accessible the songs are, how much they jump out.

Main first impressions of I Am Easy are that most of the tracks could fit in comfortably on Sleep Well Beast.  It's a National record that sounds like one.  This is good in that I can be pretty sure that some of these layered mid-tempo tracks will grow on me over time, because that always happens.  This is bad in that, well, familiarity doesn't breed excitement.  When the thing is more than an hour long, shit be sounding samey.  I can't say I have a burning desire to get back to most of I Am Easy.  So placid, not even giving me my token guitar-driven rocker or two.  The only head nod that the record got from me was during the intro of "Where Is Her Head," which of course predictably then goes with a fuzzy indie-rock minimalist melody.  So many textured soundscapes, because, well, of course there are.  This band is a well oiled machine; emphasis on machine.  I feel like the Dessners are merging into one being, actually.  Unlike on Sleep Well where one can go "this is a guitar song, this is a keyboard song," here the instruments meld together so that it's not always even easy to tell who's playing what.  

 

I do think that the sequencing makes sense as a way to ease the audience into the few ways in which the band stretch their wings.  Despite having guests, the first few tracks feel thoroughly National, with even the added vocals mostly just providing background texture while Matt does his usual thing.  It's not until "Oblivions" that one gets another singer (Mina Tindle in this case) actually taking over the song and pushing Matt into the background.  And from there we get Lisa Hannigan starting off ""The Pull Of You" and having a long soliloquy and so on as the two voices, well, pull the melody back and forth.  [As far as "Pull" goes, it's likely to end up as either one of my favorites or one of my least favorites.  Mostly it depends on whether I'll stay engaged in Matt menacingly ranting about chocolate chip pancakes.  It certainly grabs one's attention.]  At other times on the record the band does lean into a new sound for them that I'd describe as kinda choral - not gospel, but kinda churchy - that you can really only do if you have multiple ladies singing.  So this is first introduced as a dramatic counterpoint to what had previously been a very mellow guitar-and-Matt start to "Not In Kansas," a deceptively epic piece.***

And, that's a first listen.  I Am Easy To Find is fine.  Not going to rate it yet.

A few other stray thoughts:

- Down below you'll see that my least favorite song at the moment is "Roman Holiday," and that's really only for one reason: I can't stand the vocal tic of breaking up a word so that a measure ends between syllables.  A few songs do that on I Am Easy, with RH being the worst offender.

- There are mentions of being underwater in songs other than "Underwater."  The phrase "I am easy to find" appears in both the title track and at least one other track.  Seems pretty on brand.

Favorite track:  "The Pull Of You"

Runnner up:  "Not In Kansas"

Least favorite track:  "Roman Holiday"

Thoughts on further listens whenever I get around to it!

*It'd be stretching to call that a "joke."  Have I been waiting weeks to make it?  I have.

**CDs, or "compact discs," were a thing in 2001.

***Yes, "Not In Kansas" also stood out for its numerous, and appreciated, nods to R.E.M.  You know what's a really good record?  Lifes Rich Pageant.