By Elizabeth Miller ’15, Co-Editor-in-Chief
The Country Day twin alumni are at it again. On May 21, Aaron and Bryce Dessner’s band, The National, released their sixth album: Trouble Will Find Me. Fans of The National have been eagerly waiting for the band to release more music, as it has been more than three years since their last album, High Violet, came out, back in May of 2010. Fans weren’t disappointed.
Matt Berninger, the lead singer of The National, describes the band’s newest album as being like “easygoing death” in an interview with Toronto’s city magazine, The Grid. If you’re looking for a cheerful listen, this isn’t the album for you. As a general rule, this band isn’t for you. But the darkness of the music doesn’t make it any less fantastic or enticing.
The album begins with the haunting “I Should Live In Salt”, which has a rather rare simple acoustic guitar as the base of the song. Although it still has the usual, unmistakable sound of The National, it wouldn’t fit on any of the past albums; it’s a new kind of music for the group. With the recurring lines “You should know me better than that” and “I should live in salt for leaving you behind”, the song leaves the listener prepared for a collection of downers.
This is followed by “Demons”, which was the first song that the band released a video of as a preview for the album. It is classic The National: Berninger’s deep and sorrowful baritone, a well-blended background of electric guitar, bass, brass, and drums. One of the only truly upbeat songs on the album, “Don’t Swallow the Cap”, is next in the sequence. It shows a new development in the band’s music which appears on many tracks: using a deep bass voice that echoes below Berninger’s, which creates a bone-chilling tone at the heart of the vocals and emphasizes that darkness of the lyrics. These two voices are joined by a sorrowful woman’s voice, most likely that of Sharon Van Etten, a singer-songwriter who frequently appears in the National’s music.
“Fireproof” sounds like a song taken straight off of Boxer, the band’s fourth album which was released in 2008, with its light guitar riffs courtesy of the Dessner brothers and a steady drum line from Bryan Devendorf. It shows that although The National is a very different band five years later, they are still very much the same. But there is something new brought to the song: Berninger’s ever-improving ability to write lyrics. He manages to pull off having about half the lyrics being a repeating four lines, proving that less is more when it comes to great music.
“Sea Of Love”, most likely the biggest hit from the record, is next on the list. It’s main line “trouble will find me” is the namesake of the album’s title. It brings together all of the strengths of the band’s members: Berninger’s usual haunting tones, the Dessner brothers’ backup voices, a pulsing bass line from Scott Devendorf supported by his brother Bryan’s unrelenting bass drum, and enough power from the Dessners’ guitars to convince the listener that there are twenty, not two, guitars. They created a music video for the song, which copies a video made by the Russian group Zvuki Mu in the 1990s. It involves all five members of the band in a white room with an old-fashioned air conditioner, a swinging microphone, and a random dancing child. There is no other way to easily describe it.
“Heavenfaced” and “This Is the Last Time” are very good reminders that The National’s lyrics frequently make little-to-no-sense, but still sound absolutely fantastic. They tell stories that might make sense with context, but by themselves, they are nearly incoherent. But Matt Berninger could probably sing a song written by his four-year-old daughter, and no one would care. The music becomes more about what the words feel like and sound like as a whole when combined with the background music, and less about what they are saying in a literal sense. The listener quickly learns to ignore strange lines like “it’s not a fever, it’s a freezer”, “can’t face heaven all heavenfaced”, “your love is such a swamp”, and “it takes a lot of rain in the cup”, and simply enjoy the song as a complete work of art, no matter how bizarre it is.
The “death” part of “easygoing death” becomes very evident in the ironically upbeat song “Graceless”. Without listening to the words, most people would guess that it was a rather cheerful song, but that is most certainly not the case. The National uses their creepy tendencies to their advantage, creating an ominous feeling of an ever-looming death with their almost sleepy chords and eerie lyrics. This is true again in the following song, “Slipped”, which again emanates a sense of brokenness, depression, and death with the lyrics “I keep coming back here where everything slipped” and “gather your skeletons far inside.”
The only song on the album that I had previously been acquainted with was “I Need My Girl”, which I heard back in October at a concert of theirs. It was great then, but it’s absolutely spectacular on the recording. This improvement shows just how much The National uses their live performances to evolve and enhance their music, using the vibe that they develop onstage and the feedback they receive from the audience to make their songs even better. They displayed this method back in early May, when they played a song off their last record called “Sorrow” for six hours straight to see how they could improve it.
One of the ways that Berninger seems to produce the best lyrics is through a story, like the one that he uses in “Humiliation”. What the story is specifically about is quite unclear, but the raw emotion that he creates through it paired with the strong music from the rest of the group results in an insanely powerful song that sticks with you. The next song, “Pink Rabbits”, again tells a story, but this one is a little more understandable: it talks about losing someone and hoping that they’re still thinking about you. In the words of Shashank Jejurikar, ’13, “‘Pink Rabbits’ is my jam.” Everything comes together absolutely perfectly, and each part of the song stands out and blends in all at once. The song builds up perfectly to the point of nearly peaking, leaving the listener on their toes and ready to go over the top, but instead it just continues to build. It’s the kind of song that The National is so good at, with everyone playing and singing at once on a power ballad that leaves the listener feeling absolutely crushed and uplifted at the same time.
The last song on the record, “Hard To Find” ties a nice bow around the collection of songs, creating a perfect final package. With a deceptively complex and soothing tune and a gentle fade into silence at the very end of the song after the last eerie lyric, “they can all just kiss off into the air”, the album ends on a high note, reminding the listener that no one can finish a song and leave them hanging on for more like The National can.
After High Violet came out in 2010, I don’t think any fans of The National thought it could be topped. But somehow, the band managed to pull through and make another album that beat the very best with Trouble Will Find Me. I shouldn’t be surprised, because The National is, and always has been, full of surprises. Unfortunately, the next surprise might be the end of the band. They’ve been around for fourteen years and each member of the band has more to their lives than just their group now. Who knows—maybe they’ll just keep going. But I have a feeling that we may have to say goodbye rather soon.
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