Album Review: The National - Trouble Will Find Me
- Written by Hayley Scott
Whilst on tour with the likes of R.E.M. and Modest Mouse, if you wanted the kind of American indie rock that narrates about self-inflicted doubt and anxieties, The National was probably the pick of the day. Their career, at this point, can probablybe categorised into three different sections: Their first two albums, the Alligator and Boxer period, and the post-Boxer era comprising High Violet and their new album, Trouble Will Find Me. High Violet felt different from their previous albums, and maybe it had to. For if you start hitting bigger venues, probably you need to adjust your sound. If we learned anything from that David Byrne Ted Talk, it should be that. This new album again takes another few steps, going bigger on some songs, enlisting female vocalists on others, and for old fans the question is will it enchant them as much as their earlier work did.
The answer to that is, probably, it depends (no kidding). On this album there are a few innovations we have not heard yet (or that were introduced on High Violet). If you listen closely you can hear Sharon van Etten and Annie Clark on there for instance, though never in full boy/girl ballad mode. In terms of the music, something like ‘Fireproof’ is probably the most intricately composed thing they have ever done. Subtle sounds weave in and out, making some of the lines about disengagement extra effective. Next to those intricate compositions there are also the more boisterous tracks, the ones where you can see the Dessner brothers hitting their guitars full throttle at the front of some humongous stage in an even more humongous venue, like on ‘Sea of Love’.
Lyrically you can expect some changes too. One of the techniques Berninger has taken to is repetition. Coming just short of taking on “I have a dream” proportions, you can already see it happening in opener ‘I Should Live in Salt’, where he repeats “You should know me better than that” every other line. In ‘Graceless’ Berninger repeats “There is a science to walking through windows” a few times in a row without it being the chorus. Actually, whole verses are being repeated in that track. One of the strengths of the lyrics of Berninger has always been a certain ambiguity and the band has never been afraid to use some magic realism. However, this album seems a bit more fragmented, and the abstract seems to have taken on a more prominent place in the texts.
With innovations like that, it also means that some things have been replaced. For instance, with the lyrics being slightly more abstract, those narrative vignettes have more or less gone. On previous albums Berninger frequently put down these small, very concrete images. For instance, readying yourself for an official party you really really don’t want to go to (‘Apartment Story’). It gave you a window to a very real moment in someone’s life, a starting situation one could vividly imagine. There are still very specific images on this album, however, they do not as frequently lay down the actual context of a song. Also, the rawness of especially pre-Boxer has been booted out, and if they do rock, they rock more like a band playing big venues than one playing badly lit basements.
Trouble Will Find Me is released on May 20 and available from amazon