National: I Am Easy To Find (2xVinyl)

The National har annonceret, at de udgiver deres kommende album, I Am Easy To Find, d. 17. maj. Samtidig sender de i dag albummets åbningstrack, ‘You Had Your Soul With You’, på gaden. På sangen bidrager Gail Ann Dorsey bl.a. med vokal. I Am Easy To Find er The Nationals ottende studiealbum og er opfølgeren til det GRAMMY®-award-vindende album Sleep Well Beast fra 2017.

Sammen med albummet, vil bandet også udgive en kortfilm, der er inspireret af I Am Easy To Find og som også indeholder albummets sange. Kortfilmen er instrueret af Mike Mills (20th Century Women, Beginners) og har Alicia Vikander i hovedrollen. Flere detaljer om kortfilmen vil blive afsløret senere. Mills står, sammen med bandet, også som co-producer af albummet, der for størstedelens vedkommende, er indspillet i Long Pond, Hudson Valley, NY, med yderligere indspilninger i Paris, Berlin, Cincinnati, Austin, Dublin, Brooklyn og andre steder i udkanten af verden. Udover vokalbidrag fra Gail Ann Dorsey, har Sharon Van Etten, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Lisa Hannigan, Mina Tindle, m.fl. også bidraget på vokalsiden.


Tracklist

1. You Had Your Soul With You
2. Quiet Light
3. Roman Holiday
4. Oblivions
5. The Pull Of You
6. Hey Rosey
7. I Am Easy To Find
8. Her Father In The Pool
9. Where Is Her Head
10. Not In Kansas
11. So Far So Fast
12. Dust Swirls In Strange Light
13. Hairpin Turns
14. Rylan
15. Underwater
16. Light Years

Mere om I Am Easy To Find
On September 3, 2017, director Mike Mills emailed Matt Berninger to introduce himself and in very short order, the most ambitious project of the National’s nearly 20-year career was born and plans for a hard-earned vacation died. The Los Angeles-based filmmaker was coming off his third feature, 20th Century Women, and was interested in working with the band on...something. A video maybe. Berninger, already a fan of Mills’ films, not only agreed to collaborate, he essentially handed over the keys to the band’s creative process.

The result is I Am Easy To Find, a 24-minute film by Mills starring Alicia Vikander, and I Am Easy to Find, a 68-minute album by the National. The former is not the video for the latter; the latter is not the soundtrack to the former. The two projects are, as Mills calls them, “Playfully hostile siblings that love to steal from each other”—they share music and words and DNA and impulses and a vision about what it means to be human in 2019, but don’t necessarily need one another. The movie was composed like a piece of music; the music was assembled like a film, by a film director. The frontman and natural focal point was deliberately and dramatically sidestaged in favour of a variety of female voices, nearly all of whom have long been in the group’s orbit. It is unlike anything either artist has ever attempted and also totally in line with how they’ve created for much of their careers.

As the album’s opening track, ‘You Had Your Soul With You,’ unfurls, it’s so far, so National: a digitally manipulated guitar line, skittering drums, Berninger’s familiar baritone, mounting tension. Then around the 2:15 mark, the true nature of I Am Easy To Find announces itself: The racket subsides, strings swell, and the voice of long-time David Bowie bandmate Gail Ann Dorsey booms out—not as background vocals, not as a hook, but to take over the song. Elsewhere it’s Irish singer-songwriter Lisa Hannigan, or Sharon Van Etten, or Mina Tindle or Kate Stables of This Is the Kit, or varying combinations of them. The Brooklyn Youth Choir, whom Bryce Dessner had worked with before. There are choral arrangements and strings on nearly every track, largely put together by Bryce in Paris—not a negation of the band’s dramatic tendencies, but a redistribution of them.

“Yes, there are a lot of women singing on this, but it wasn't because, ‘Oh, let's have more women's voices,’ says Berninger. “It was more, ‘Let's have more of a fabric of people's identities.’ It would have been better to have had other male singers, but my ego wouldn't let that happen.”