This album was released on May 17^th, 2019 on 4AD Records.

Ambition is an important trait to have from a musician’s standpoint. It fuels progression in the composition of the music, allows for more artistic expression, and has the ability to completely change the trajectory of an artist’s career. Even though ambition has given us some revolutionary work in the past, it has also given us some very lackluster efforts as well. The typical response to something being off-kilter compared to the rest of one’s discography is that it is their vision and that if nobody understands it, that’s their fault. In reality, some endeavors into the avant-garde can give the public some things to scratch their head at. With The National’s eighth studio album, I Am Easy to Find, I was left with many questions for the five-piece and the direction they took on this new record.

Before the album should even be listened to, it should be made aware that there is a 24-minute short film that is a companion piece to the album. The story of a nameless woman going through life echoes the theme of the album’s contents. The album itself is sixteen songs long, clocking in at sixty-three minutes, so the initial reaction was that the journey IAMTF was going to present would be a rollercoaster, one with ups and downs and some occasional trips to the outside convention that modern alternative music has settled into as of recent. Instead, two (arguably three or four) songs give us some moderately-paced alternative sound… and that’s it. The remainder of the album stays behind the backdrop of an atmospheric piano and muffled guitar, with Matt Berninger’s croon staying in a very low octave for fifty minutes. The album was, for lack of a better term, boring, and didn’t venture outside of this melodious, ambient sound. A high point of the instrumentality was the Bryce Dessner-orchestrated symphonic element. Strings played a major part on the album, and even though the songs bleed together, that specific aspect of the music was very well-executed.

The album differs from the normality in the sense that a majority of the songs feature female vocalists. The contrast between the many vocalists that bring their talents to the record and Berninger’s low tones offer a bit of intrigue through the course of the album. Particular strong performances were on the opener “You Had Your Soul with You”, where Gail Ann Dorsey provides an unexpected beauty before the song. Eve Owen on “Not in Kansas” was another highlight, and contained the best imagery in the story as well. Lyrically, the album is well-written, The words the Berninger (and his wife, who contributed to writing) put across the page are captivating to read along to, despite the musical droning.

IAMTF and the companion film both stand on their own as individual entities that share the same music through reconfiguration and different creative insight, but where the film excels in telling a story and being able to convey emotion through a visual output, the album lacks the ability to match with its audial effort. As ambitious as this release was, and despite the few high points of the album that jumped to the forefront of the presentation, this is not a record that stands to stay in my long-term rotation.

Rating: 5/10

Favorite Songs: “Oblivions”, “Where Is Her Head”, “Hairpin Turns”