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**The National – I Am Easy To Find**
★★★★☆

After nearly two decades of perfecting their brand of melancholic indie rock, The National arrived at a crossroads in 2019. Following the Trump-era anxiety of 2017's *Sleep Well Beast*, Matt Berninger and company could have easily retreated into their comfort zone of baritone brood and wine-soaked despair. Instead, they chose to blow up their own playbook entirely.

*I Am Easy To Find* emerged from an unlikely collaboration with filmmaker Mike Mills, who approached the band about creating a companion piece to his short film of the same name. What started as a soundtrack project evolved into something far more ambitious: a 63-minute meditation on identity, relationships, and the spaces between words that features more female vocals than Berninger's trademark growl. It's the sound of a band refusing to coast on their considerable reputation.

The album opens with "You Had Your Soul With You," a deceptively gentle introduction that finds Berninger sharing vocal duties with Gail Ann Dorsey. It's a mission statement disguised as a love song, with lyrics that feel like fragments of overheard conversations: "You had your soul with you / I was in no mood." The interplay between male and female voices becomes the album's defining characteristic, with contributions from Phoebe Bridgers, Mina Tindle, and members of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus creating a Greek chorus effect that transforms The National's typically insular worldview into something more communal.

Musically, the band ventures into uncharted territory while maintaining their essential DNA. The Dessner brothers' intricate guitar work remains, but it's often buried beneath layers of synthesizers, strings, and unconventional percussion. "Oblivions" builds from whispered confessions to a crescendo of horns and voices that recalls Talk Talk's experimental period, while "Where Is Her Head" strips everything down to piano, strings, and Berninger's most vulnerable vocal performance in years.

The album's centerpiece, "Not in Kansas," serves as both its most accessible and most adventurous moment. Built around a hypnotic bassline and featuring vocals from Bridgers, it's the rare National song that feels genuinely hopeful. When Berninger sings "I'm not in Kansas anymore," it's both a nod to *The Wizard of Oz* and an acknowledgment that the band has traveled far from their comfort zone. The result is their most emotionally direct song since "Bloodbuzz Ohio."

"Quiet Light" showcases the album's collaborative spirit at its finest, with Berninger's weathered baritone weaving through a tapestry of female voices. It's a song about communication breakdown that ironically achieves perfect harmony, building to a climax that feels both cathartic and resigned. Similarly, "Roman Holiday" finds beauty in mundane details, transforming a simple piano melody into an epic rumination on domestic life.

The album stumbles occasionally under the weight of its own ambition. At 16 tracks, it feels overstuffed, with interludes like "Dust Swirls in Strange Light" serving more as mood pieces than fully realized songs. Some of the more experimental moments, particularly the heavily processed vocals on "Hey Rosey," feel disconnected from the band's strengths.

Yet these missteps pale beside the album's considerable achievements. *I Am Easy To Find* finds The National grappling with middle age without succumbing to either nostalgia or cynicism. It's an album about being lost that somehow feels like a roadmap, a collection of songs about disconnection that achieves genuine intimacy.

The album's legacy continues to reveal itself four years later. While it didn't spawn any radio hits, it expanded The National's palette in ways that influenced their subsequent work. More importantly, it demonstrated that veteran bands could take genuine creative risks without alienating their core audience. The extensive use of female vocals has become increasingly common in indie rock, but few have deployed it as thoughtfully as The National does here.

*I Am Easy To Find* stands as proof that The National's greatest strength isn't their ability to soundtrack heartbreak, but their willingness to examine what comes after. It's an album that grows more rewarding with each listen, revealing new layers of meaning like a good novel. In an era of playlist culture and shortened attention spans, The National crafted something rare: an album that demands to be experienced as a complete work, a journey through the complexities of modern life that feels both deeply personal and universally resonant.