Trouble Will Find Me

Enervating blood ties, romances won and lost, marital adversities, fading bonds of friendship: perhaps more than any other contemporary band, The National’s very artistic make-up is predicated on the nuances of human relations.  Such a nexus of interrelational trials and tribulations once again rears its head on their eagerly-anticipated sixth LP, Trouble Will Find Me.

The build-up to this record saw the release of Mistaken for Strangers, a tour-documentary which inadvertently turned into an exhaustive portrait of the brothers Berninger, bringing another fraternal-pairing into the band’s field of consciousness alongside founding sibling-sets the Dessners and Devendorfs.

It is in that vein that opener ‘I Should Live In Salt’ announces itself.  Typically for the band, this opener is less of a kicking-down-the-door affair, and more of an unexpected call at two in the morning.  Full of heart and empty of wine bottle, the voice at the other end is possessed with the sort of earnest, deep-set confession to a loved one that ultimately came out of the documentary process: “I should live in salt for leaving you behind”.  In their repertoire of album catalysts, it’s not as enrapturing as ‘Secret Meeting’, as stately as ‘Fake Empire’, or as resoundingly titanic as ‘Terrible Love’, but its measured, powerful build ensures that it’ll take a heart of stone not to ultimately melt from hearing this.

The National have responded to their growing success by turning towards themselves more than ever…

This conflation of the subdued and the gut-wrenching ultimately proves to be the underlying essence of Trouble Will Find Me.  Where their peers might have been drawn towards the overblown – a concept album here, a gospel choir there – The National have responded to their growing success by turning towards themselves more than ever.

Their craft is honed to its utmost, with the production in particular being utterly gorgeous.  Despite the often heavy atmosphere, each intricate arpeggio and detailed drum-line is crystal clear.  Berninger’s vocals have never sounded stronger, somehow even deeper than before at points; acutely imbued with a mature weariness that’s steadily overtaken the mid-30s anguish that characterised Alligator.

The National still possess that unceasing and sometimes uncanny capacity for their songs to somehow suddenly find one more thing to break inside when caught in a certain light.  The titular trouble that has found them will undoubtedly find the listener, but this time, there’s an absence of those potent releases: the taut, ragged edges of catharsis which mark some of their strongest work.  ‘Sea Of Love’ comes closest to capturing such visceral highs, whilst the subtly sharp gear-shifts to soaring magnificence in ‘Graceless’ and ‘Humiliation’ particularly trigger all the chills to match the ocean of feels.  But over the course of an hour, these moments of manifest energy can sometimes feel few and far between.

This is the bizarre conundrum: a lack of cohesive brio, belying the fact that the songs are nearly all singularly brilliant.  The second half of the album is just an exceptional sequence, and taken individually, tracks like ‘Fireproof’ and particularly ‘This Is The Last Time’ – which builds into a disquieting swirl of strings, feedback and Sharon Van Etten backing – are undeniably stellar compositions.  Yet, they ultimately feel somewhat lost in the tide of the record, where perhaps these individual moments might have soared in various manners on previous releases.

Nevertheless, even with this predominance of slow-burn, and the lingering itch for some all-consuming moment of crowning, raw-throat inducing transcendence, it is nigh-on impossible to find something to actively disparage.  There isn’t a single weak song in sight, and the consistent astute excellence of this band’s output is still in full effect; something to behold, admire and treasure.  There could be something more, but nothing has been lost, and their legions of adorers will still be found.  That’s more than enough to ask by this point.

Similar To: The Antlers, The Walkmen, Tindersticks

MP3: ‘Graceless’, ‘Sea Of Love’, ‘I Need My Girl’