The National may have chosen their name because it was seemingly meaningless, but over the last 14 years they’ve built up a mighty convincing résumé of reasons for why it was the perfect candidate. While the band may have quit their day jobs around the release of 2005’s Alligator, their Ohio origins have allowed their brooding brand of indie rock to continue to epitomize and glorify the discontent of the mundane American working class. There’s never been anything flashy about The National — even with their rise to fame they’ve remained more gray than gold, forever stuck in the dull consistency of the 9-to-5 work week.
The National’s newest, Trouble Will Find Me, is the band’s fourth excellent LP in a row, and at this point the only comparisons they’re garnering are those to their previous works. Yet Trouble finds the band at a point long past the boozy weddings of Boxer and the alcohol-tinged social anxieties of High Violet: this is a record for the early 40-somethings; a record full of the fear of leaving those you love behind. And as a result, Trouble is The National’s most honest and open work yet. Matt Berninger, the band’s baritoned ring leader, uses the majority of the album to pen his struggles with personal relationships (including the one he keeps with himself) in a more straightforward manner than he ever has. Long gone are the days of the scatterbrained and bizarrely beautiful metaphors that made the band’s melancholy appear almost attractive. In other words, Trouble Will Find Me is a pretty depressing listen.
The actual instrumentation, however, is amongst the most elegant and hopeful sounding The National have ever crafted. The disc straddles between slow-building ballads and steady rockers, with the former (the best two are “Heavenfaced” and “Slipped”) being sparsely instrumented and hauntingly beautiful and the latter (“Don’t Swallow the Cap,” “Sea of Love,” “Graceless,” and “Humiliation”) showing the band at their most revved up since Alligator, driven by a pummeling rhythm section. Sonically, The National again brought their “A” game: the Dessner twins not only intertwine gorgeous guitar melodies to form a sum greater than their individual parts throughout Trouble, but they also produced the thing. The Devendorf brothers are solid as well — especially Bryan on the sticks, who sounds more mechanically precise than George-Michael Bluth on a wood block. And even though I’m not a huge fan of the lyrics, Berninger still sounds as smooth and humble-spoken as always.
Trouble is an extremely cohesive album volleying between these ballads and rockers, but nevertheless it does have its standout moments. “Demons,” a track where Berninger, well, confronts his personal demons, showcases an impeccable drum beat and Matt’s best lyrical performance. My favorite track, “This is the Last Time,” is perhaps the most crushing song The National have written to date and one of the few songs that allows Berninger’s vocals to really breathe. It’s a constant anthemic build — and right when you catch up to it, the music swerves into a devastating halt. But with the highs come the lows: just as with all of The National’s albums (minus the perfect 10 that is Boxer), Trouble contains a couple of tracks that are not only throwaways but ones that I flat out despise. And with the album clocking in at a whopping 55 minutes, Trouble could stand to shed a few.
Overall, however, Trouble Will Find Me is another solid and fitting album from a band best known for doing just that. Except of course, that while The National have somehow always managed to be both timeless and older than their time, Trouble Will Find Me sounds like their age finally catching up with them. This is the first offering from the band that no longer makes sounding hopeless glamorous; the entire record is a steady, light drizzle. Trouble Will Find Me is both less immediate and more uniform than their past releases, but these may be the kinds of things that come along with being in your forties. After all, what the hell do I know? I’m just a kid.
Trouble Will Find Me