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180g 2LP Featuring Vocal Contributions From Sharon Van Etten, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Lisa Hannigan, Mina Tindle & More!
I Am Easy To Find is The Nationals eighth studio album and the follow-up to 2017's GRAMMY®-award winning release Sleep Well Beast. A companion short film with the same name will also be released with music by The National and inspired by the album. The film was directed by Academy Award-nominated director Mike Mills (20th Century Women, Beginners), and starring Academy Award Winner Alicia Vikander. Mills, along with the band, is credited as co-producer of the album, which was recorded at Long Pond, Hudson Valley, NY with vocal contributions from Sharon Van Etten, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Lisa Hannigan, Mina Tindle and more.
On September 3, 2017, director Mike Mills emailed Matt Berninger to introduce himself and in very short order, the most ambitious project of the National's nearly 20-year career was born and plans for a hard-earned vacation died. The Los Angeles-based filmmaker was coming off his third feature, 20th Century Women, and was interested in working with the band on...something. A video maybe. Berninger, already a fan of Mills' films, not only agreed to collaborate, he essentially handed over the keys to the band's creative process.
The result is I Am Easy to Find, a 24-minute film by Mills starring Alicia Vikander, and I Am Easy to Find, a 68-minute album by the National. The former is not the video for the latter; the latter is not the soundtrack to the former. The two projects are, as Mills calls them, "Playfully hostile siblings that love to steal from each other"they share music and words and DNA and impulses and a vision about what it means to be human in 2019, but don't necessarily need one another. The movie was composed like a piece of music; the music was assembled like a film, by a film director. The frontman and natural focal point was deliberately and dramatically side staged in favor of a variety of female voices, nearly all of whom have long been in the group's orbit. It is unlike anything either artist has ever attempted and also totally in line with how they've created for much of their careers.
As the album's opening track, "You Had Your Soul With You", unfurls, it's so far, so National: a digitally manipulated guitar line, skittering drums, Berninger's familiar baritone, mounting tension. Then around the 2:15 mark, the true nature of I Am Easy To Find announces itself: the racket subsides, strings swell, and the voice of long-time David Bowie bandmate Gail Ann Dorsey booms outnot as background vocals, not as a hook, but to take over the song. Elsewhere it's Irish singer-songwriter Lisa Hannigan, or Sharon Van Etten, or Mina Tindle or Kate Stables of This Is the Kit, or varying combinations of them. The Brooklyn Youth Choir, whom Bryce Dessner had worked with before. There are choral arrangements and strings on nearly every track, largely put together by Bryce in Parisnot a negation of the bands dramatic tendencies, but a redistribution of them.
"Yes, there are a lot of women singing on this, but it wasn't because, 'Oh, let's have more women's voices,'" says Berninger. "It was more, 'Let's have more of a fabric of people's identities.' It would have been better to have had other male singers, but my ego wouldn't let that happen."
"On I Am Easy to Find, the indie standard-bearers have reconfigured themselves with multiple women's voices at the LP's core, a portion of the roughly 77 musicians that temporarily explode the band's quintet. They pull it off without diluting their National-ness. The lyrical and formal suggestion, explored throughout the record, seems to be that it takes two to tango, and despite the canyon that separates our perceptions, however gendered, we all share vast tracts of emotional territory, and are capable of deep empathy. Whether we act on it is another story." - Rolling Stone, The 50 Best Albums of 2019 So Far, June 2019
"After the four-and-a-half-year wait between Trouble Will Find Me and Sleep Well Beast, there was little evidence we should expect a new National album in 2019. And yet: Spurred on by their collaboration with director Mike Mills and a host of new voices prominent across I Am Easy To Find, the National instead briskly returned with one of their most intricate and vibrant releases to date. Often locating more brightness and peace than its predecessor, I Am Easy To Find feels like an answer and an ending to one era of the National, a capstone for one decade of indie world domination that leaves the door open for the band to continue evolving into the next." - Stereogum, The 50 Best Albums Of 2019 So Far, June 2019
"The National has spent decades in self-reflection, questioning connection and seeking answers. Eight albums later, she responds. Women take the wheel in I Am Easy to Find, driving the band's narrative to undiscovered territories. The effort is direct, yet complex, unfolding a messy universe that is becoming wiser with perspective." - NPR, Best Albums Of 2019 (So Far)
Features:
• Double LP
• 180g Vinyl
• Limited time download card
Selections:
Side A:
1. You Had Your Soul With You
2. Quiet Light
3. Roman Holiday
4. Oblivions
Side B:
1. The Pull Of You
2. Hey Rosey
3. I Am Easy to Find
4. Her Father In The Pool
Side C:
1. Where Is Her Head
2. Not In Kansas
3. So Far So Fast
4. Dust Swirls In Strange Light
Side D:
1. Hairpin Turns
2. Rylan
3. Underwater
4. Light Years
180g 2LP Featuring Vocal Contributions From Sharon Van Etten, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Lisa Hannigan, Mina Tindle & More!
I Am Easy To Find is The Nationals eighth studio album and the follow-up to 2017's GRAMMY®-award winning release Sleep Well Beast. A companion short film with the same name will also be released with music by The National and inspired by the album. The film was directed by Academy Award-nominated director Mike Mills (20th Century Women, Beginners), and starring Academy Award Winner Alicia Vikander. Mills, along with the band, is credited as co-producer of the album, which was recorded at Long Pond, Hudson Valley, NY with vocal contributions from Sharon Van Etten, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Lisa Hannigan, Mina Tindle and more.
On September 3, 2017, director Mike Mills emailed Matt Berninger to introduce himself and in very short order, the most ambitious project of the National's nearly 20-year career was born and plans for a hard-earned vacation died. The Los Angeles-based filmmaker was coming off his third feature, 20th Century Women, and was interested in working with the band on...something. A video maybe. Berninger, already a fan of Mills' films, not only agreed to collaborate, he essentially handed over the keys to the band's creative process.
The result is I Am Easy to Find, a 24-minute film by Mills starring Alicia Vikander, and I Am Easy to Find, a 68-minute album by the National. The former is not the video for the latter; the latter is not the soundtrack to the former. The two projects are, as Mills calls them, "Playfully hostile siblings that love to steal from each other"they share music and words and DNA and impulses and a vision about what it means to be human in 2019, but don't necessarily need one another. The movie was composed like a piece of music; the music was assembled like a film, by a film director. The frontman and natural focal point was deliberately and dramatically side staged in favor of a variety of female voices, nearly all of whom have long been in the group's orbit. It is unlike anything either artist has ever attempted and also totally in line with how they've created for much of their careers.
As the album's opening track, "You Had Your Soul With You", unfurls, it's so far, so National: a digitally manipulated guitar line, skittering drums, Berninger's familiar baritone, mounting tension. Then around the 2:15 mark, the true nature of I Am Easy To Find announces itself: the racket subsides, strings swell, and the voice of long-time David Bowie bandmate Gail Ann Dorsey booms outnot as background vocals, not as a hook, but to take over the song. Elsewhere it's Irish singer-songwriter Lisa Hannigan, or Sharon Van Etten, or Mina Tindle or Kate Stables of This Is the Kit, or varying combinations of them. The Brooklyn Youth Choir, whom Bryce Dessner had worked with before. There are choral arrangements and strings on nearly every track, largely put together by Bryce in Parisnot a negation of the bands dramatic tendencies, but a redistribution of them.
"Yes, there are a lot of women singing on this, but it wasn't because, 'Oh, let's have more women's voices,'" says Berninger. "It was more, 'Let's have more of a fabric of people's identities.' It would have been better to have had other male singers, but my ego wouldn't let that happen."
"On I Am Easy to Find, the indie standard-bearers have reconfigured themselves with multiple women's voices at the LP's core, a portion of the roughly 77 musicians that temporarily explode the band's quintet. They pull it off without diluting their National-ness. The lyrical and formal suggestion, explored throughout the record, seems to be that it takes two to tango, and despite the canyon that separates our perceptions, however gendered, we all share vast tracts of emotional territory, and are capable of deep empathy. Whether we act on it is another story." - Rolling Stone, The 50 Best Albums of 2019 So Far, June 2019
"After the four-and-a-half-year wait between Trouble Will Find Me and Sleep Well Beast, there was little evidence we should expect a new National album in 2019. And yet: Spurred on by their collaboration with director Mike Mills and a host of new voices prominent across I Am Easy To Find, the National instead briskly returned with one of their most intricate and vibrant releases to date. Often locating more brightness and peace than its predecessor, I Am Easy To Find feels like an answer and an ending to one era of the National, a capstone for one decade of indie world domination that leaves the door open for the band to continue evolving into the next." - Stereogum, The 50 Best Albums Of 2019 So Far, June 2019
"The National has spent decades in self-reflection, questioning connection and seeking answers. Eight albums later, she responds. Women take the wheel in I Am Easy to Find, driving the band's narrative to undiscovered territories. The effort is direct, yet complex, unfolding a messy universe that is becoming wiser with perspective." - NPR, Best Albums Of 2019 (So Far)
Features:
• Double LP
• 180g Vinyl
• Limited time download card
Selections:
Side A:
1. You Had Your Soul With You
2. Quiet Light
3. Roman Holiday
4. Oblivions
Side B:
1. The Pull Of You
2. Hey Rosey
3. I Am Easy to Find
4. Her Father In The Pool
Side C:
1. Where Is Her Head
2. Not In Kansas
3. So Far So Fast
4. Dust Swirls In Strange Light
Side D:
1. Hairpin Turns
2. Rylan
3. Underwater
4. Light Years
