The National - Trouble Will Find Me

I think the album is a bundle of good contradictions. It's not really a double album but feels like one, it's ballad heavy but not necessarily chill, it's got some of Matt's best lyrics and singing but he often takes a back seat to other singers and singing, it's got some pretty jarring experimental elements but it's totally MOR. And so on.

Oh, and needless to say, the drumming is incredible.

i love every lyric and sound in "quiet light"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S37thEwlWPA

good performance of "you had your soul with you", with string section and second drummer (no gail ann dorsey though)

learning how not to cry every time there's another sad unbearable morning
but sometimes there's nothing i can do
i can't help it

the drumming on "quiet light" is brilliant, bryan devendorf seems to get better with every album somehow

So these guys are definitely going all-in on everything - strings, singers, horns, etc. - for this tour?

they've had a horn section forever but idk whether the strings etc. are sticking around for the tour or are only around for the run of album/film premiere dates they've been doing over the last month

wow i REALLY love this album

https://www.nme.com/news/national-rockier-songs-leftover-may-get-freezer-2488317

apparently they've got a bunch of rockier material left over from the Sleep Well Beast sessions that didn't make this album either since it didn't fit the mood of the film etc. so i hope that'll be more "the system only dreams"/"you had your soul with you" than "turtleneck" whenever it sees the light of day

The contemporary classical bent of whichever one of the brothers is into that stuff really pays off on this album's arrangements.

That is Bryce! His own chamber music is def worth checking out

it's the way that you're going to stop needing to tell me you want me as much as i want you to

Their best album.

yep

I've never top tenned one of their albums before.

me neither, and it usually takes me a while to figure out how i feel about them, cf. the album this thread is named after

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbXnnn8z1tE

i get why people would dismiss "rylan," feels like it's borrowed most of its rumble from "apartment story" to create the most national national song ever, but... it's so catchy

I just thought of perfect "feat. female guest singer" example that kind of pulls off what this album does: "My Curse," by fellow (can it be a coincidence?) Cincinnati sons Afghan Whigs.

Also, maybe "You're Still Standing There" by Steve Earle, when previously more or less AWOL Lucinda Williams suddenly pops up.

I didn't realize that the album was made in such close collaboration with Mike Mills, who even produced. Has he produced anything else?

Marcy Mays on "My Curse" feels to me like much more direct and successful attempt at a counterpoint/perspective change than anything here.

anyway I can already tell this is going to be yet another one of those albums where I stick to listening to my own resequence/edit and get a lot more out of it that way

i made a thread: thread for i am easy to find, the 2019 album by the national and film by mike mills

There are lots of candidates, but this really is the best album by them, isn't it? So sad and pretty.

it is

This is by far my favourite album of theirs. There's real sadness but also exaggerated sadness (played for humour, I think?), similar to what Tindersticks used to do. It's a perfect balance that they haven't managed to duplicate since.