The National
's eighth record came from prosaic beginnings. Director
Mike Mills
-- not to be confused with the bassist from
R.E.M.
, as he so often is -- invited
Matt Berninger
to collaborate, a notion that quickly spawned two projects: a short film from
Mills
and a new album from
the National
, both entitled
I Am Easy to Find
.
is credited as a co-producer on the album, a bit of a stretch considering how he is by no means a musician, but his contributions did indeed help the album take shape. Beginning with a clutch of outtakes from
Sleep Well Beast
,
and
formed these scraps into the elusive, shape-shifting
. Lasting a lengthy 64 minutes,
paints intimacy on an epic scale: everything sounds hushed, as private as a secret, yet there's a sweep to the execution. Considering this grand scale along with the album's origins and
' presence, it's tempting to call
cinematic, yet that suggests a possible narrative cohesion to its 16 songs when the National aren't interested in a story, they're concerned with impressions. The songs of
Carin Besser
are contained units where each line fits together tightly, an aesthetic that ties together the album without quite lending the album a theme; if this music is cinematic, it's the equivalent of an evening's worth of tasteful experimental films. What distinguishes the album is
's openness toward collaboration, a notion that is not limited to
. Highlighted by
Sharon Van Etten
Gail Ann Dorsey
-- a veteran of
David Bowie
's band --
invite a number of female vocalists to sing on the album, lending
a welcome sense of openness. Where
can often seem hermetically sealed -- such insularity is a key to their appeal --
has loose ends and picturesque detours in addition to a revolving cast of characters and a suggestion of mess that give the album an appealingly unkempt sense of humanity. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine