The National - Trouble Will Find Me

Is the lack of discussion about this new release in any way a passive aggressive kinda thing??

There's a new National album !?!

"This Is The Last Time" is the first track to really get my attention. Though I still like everything else so far...

alfred's review of this in spin is totally otm

Kudos for linking this band to the John Cale of Paris 1919. There's something to that, whether or not it is actually there.

"don't swallow the cap" is an early standout

Some words here - http://sickmouthy.com/2013/05/26/albums-from-may-part-1/

Good read, Nick. I like the idea of Jim O'Rourke behind the mixing table on this one. I really, really enjoy this National album, they are so good at what they do. But now you spoiled it all by presenting me with what could have been ;)

Nah, I do think O'Rourke in particular could have helped them to be more 'sparse' at times, which makes you listen more closely, with even more attention.

this bands shite

Listened to the boxer on repeat in the cleanroom today. That album is still the best. High violet is ok but the first track sounds terrible, and I don't understand. Excited to hear new one if spotify ever gets it.

go carl co!

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/music_box/2013/05/the_national_s_trouble_will_find_me_reviewed_too_many_crescendos.html

i had to point out to carl that i employed the term "Crescendo Rock" as early as 2006. and that it IS an actual genre of sorts with last fm tags and everything. but surely there are cases of even earlier coinage.

alfred's review of this in spin is totally otm

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Thursday, May 23, 2013 11:13 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Kudos for linking this band to the John Cale of Paris 1919. There's something to that, whether or not it is actually there.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, May 23, 2013

aw thanks!

Alfred-nice catch on Berninger utilizing his head voice more. and, eek, I guess that's the highlight of the album for me thus far. Making HV look rather strong in comparison, and I thought that was a but of a letdown. Especially lyrically. 'I was afraid I'd eat your brains'?! They seem to be treading water a bit with the crescendo rock trick, works great on a fantastic riff like England, not so well on a mediocrity like This is the last time.

Appreciate the Sad Songs shout out above-my favorite track of theirs may be Murder Me Rachael. I miss the really loud songs they used to do.

I really love This Is The Last Time.

I got invited to see these guys tomorrow night in Brooklyn, at the Barclays Center. Such an odd band to become an arena headliner.

Trying to like this... But it's not working.

Do I need to look up the lyrics and sit down with it top really get it? I'm prepared to do that if ILX thinks it wise.

There's too much going on on this record, too many ideas, too many layers, too many instruments. It blurs together as a consequence, and the songs lose a sense of individuality; live they were more discernible as separate entities, Graceless had far more energy and punch, for instance. For that reason, for me, this is inferior to High Violet and Boxer by quite some way. My wife adores it though, but she likes them far more than me in general.

Its too tasteful. They're very tasteful generally, obviously, but this over-stepped, I think.

Agreed, and I think it's just too long a record to maintain this sound successfully. Boxer has a similar consistent sound & feel, but is the perfect length for an album (IMHO) so it never drags ...

no surprise this has appeared on a few EOY lists.

As maximalist as it is, Boxer has a certain economy in the way it's mixed; there's never too many elements.

This album is... not for me. Sends me to sleep.

I see all your points and don't disagree with 'em, but fuck it, I love this record anyway. I think Berninger's writing is good enough that I can overlook the goopiness.

This is The National's best record. Funny that the band has this reputation as so uptight, because this album feels so loose and free to me. The lyrics have a free-association feel to them at times, but they're also pointed and funny, and littered with music-geek references. It doesn't feel like a sad album to me as much as it does an album about the joys of listening to sad records. I just unabashedly love it.

So I've listened to this a few times, and originally I didn't find much to latch onto. I'm not a lyrics guy, but on previous National albums, I could usually find one or two songs with an undeniable hook, and that was good enough. This one, not so much. But God help me, the more I listen to this, the more I kind of dig the ~vibe~ of it. Like, my favorite experience with the National was seeing them live at Pitchfork a few years ago, and they were all clad in suits, and it was night-time, and that sort of literate, leather-voiced, boozy-warm miserabilism worked really well in that setting. So maybe I just need to pour myself some scotch and sit in an armchair in a dimly lit room and just soak it up, you know?

like Matt Berninger himself!

Problem is, I'm a bourbon guy.

Listen again to Pink Rabbits: maybe my favorite lyrics of any of their songs.

Never paid attention to these guys but a bad breakup and deciding to give this band a go coincided fortuitously.

This album is amazing. 2013 was an amazing year for music i don't care what the actual music critics on this board say.

it is only a great year for music when paris hilton releases an album.

Finish your pink rabbits, fellas.

they were on Saturday Night Live last Saturday night and it was really good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ack4cJry0as&list=UUzB3VrTOjAStUvaLPMDjHDw

The National are a dark hole to go down when you're going through a breakup

Good luck, Gukbe

<3 to Gukbe

this record along with others serve a similar function for me although i think theres a risk of "indulging" too much in sadness with music like this, at least for me. certain lines in this record really get to the heart of things though. it's self-indulgent and sentimental but there isn't an ounce of bullshit anywhere, if ounces are even the right unit to measure bullshit.

To me the National fill the same role the Cure once played. Not depressing/sad so much as a certain mood that can apparently be conjured at will.

Yeah. I had picked up their last three albums on the rec of a friend last year but never bothered to give them more of a once over. When relationship collapsed and I found myself suddenly moving cities in a rental car for a 16 hour drive, I couldn't bear to listen to anything I knew so I put them on because the mood felt right. Can't tell if listening to them on a loop for all those hours made things worse or better, but I certainly appreciate them now when I never did before.

(truth be told if I had any tindersticks on my ipod I probably would've reached for them)

...I don't know why I'd never connected Tindersticks and The National until you did just just now but otm

They have their similarities but I would never confuse them. Tindersticks more soulful and ... wry? Dry?

why?

To me the National fill the same role the Cure once played.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, March 15, 2014

http://fogsmoviereviews.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/blasphemer.jpg

Note the past tense, man. The Cure hasn't done anything I've liked even the slightest bit since "Bloodflowers," and that was back in ... 2000? Not coincidentally, the same year the National more or less kicked off, though still a good 5 years before "Alligator."

Re: Tindersticks, I always thought the band was going for, or has been going for for some time now, this moody formalist soul thing, and that also its sense of humor was so deliberately subsumed into this morass of delirious melancholia. The National are a lot artier, more inclined toward amorphous ambient guitar shading, both funnier yet also, strangely, heavier in terms of mood. That is:

certain lines in this record really get to the heart of things though.

This is really key to the National, I think. Tindersticks is more explicit in its ennui or whatever. The National, lyrically, is goofier, more surreal and/or stream of conscious, tossed off, but they somehow convey (at their best) something really powerful.

I was teething on roses/I was in guns and noses

I have noticed that this album features more than its share of references to hanging at the pool, however obliquely. "I’ll try to call you from the party/It’s full of punks and cannonballers." "All the L.A. women/Fall asleep while swimmin'." Etc.

The LA women verse is one of my favorites in any song ever. "She said babe you're better off..." A hypercondensed short story.

i like that verse too. "i got paid to fish 'em out and then one day i lost the job" is a lil tangled up in blue.

This album is so perfect I almost don't want them to follow it up.

it's their best record but i think they can better it, or at least make it shorter

^ could almost agree

to me it's surprising they had this in them after the misstep of high violet