Album Of The Second: The National, Trouble Will Find Me

Yeah, yeah, Molly is reviewing the new National album, no surprises there.

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If High Violet was shot through with a fear of love, its reality versus its ideal, then Trouble Will Find Me is about the fear of losing that love, real, imagined, strong, fragile, destructive, healing. That's what the album feels like - the beginning of a recovery, complete with doubts and sneaking fears. Demons says it best: "I get the sudden sinking feeling / Of a man about to fly" There's simultaneously an ease to it and a fragility, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop but willing to see that you've got a good thing going. Even if it feels like the slightest slip could shatter it."I don't want you to grieve / But I want you to sympathise / I can't blame you for losing your mind for a little while / So did I,"  sings Matt, on Slipped. And a little later, in I Need My Girl; "I know I was a lot of things / But I am good, I am grounded." The music itself, as nuanced as ever, is gentler, this time around. It's cooler, calmer; more about the contrast between the clean open space and the shadows intrinsic to their sound. Where Boxer was shrouded, Trouble Will Find Me is exposed to the light, in spirit as well as sound. The metaphors aren't as oblique, and every line tastes of a confession. It makes the album accessible, relatable; but still the metaphors are there, still strange, still them.  It's still a warm record, though, for all that - but it feels more at ease with itself than any album before it. It's something to while away the afternoon with, not something to listen to in the middle of the night with nothing but the glow of your computer screen to keep you company. But the darkness of their previous albums is still there in songs like the glorious This Is The Last Time, and the rain-slicked Fireproof.  

It's different, this new, more open sound - but it's still unmistakably a National album. More cohesive, yes - the songs so interwoven that listening to it in pieces feels almost like blasphemy - and some will say more mature. But that's just one of those phrases, isn't it? The truth is that they've always had that maturity, hiding away in songs like 29 Years and Lucky You; it's just that with every song from Secret Meeting onward they've been shifting, through raucous Abel to majestic Mistaken For Strangers and from there to Anyone's Ghost - it's a progression, and as different as Trouble Will Find Me seems it's also nigh on inevitable. The band have become more and more comfortable with themselves as time has gone on  - and this is the result. An album made up of great song upon great song, confident and self-assured. Like every album of theirs it benefits from repeated listens, benefits from burying yourself in it and not surfacing for a week - but, that said, there's an immediacy hiding in Sea Of Love and Graceless that grabs you from the very first note. I don't know how they do it - how every album is better than all those that went before - but they've pulled it off. Again.

And the next one will be even better, you'll see.

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Mollx

A Random Collection Of Songs With No Connection Whatsoever, Apart From Perhaps Long Hair

Hi!

 It's a lot better than it sounds like it's going to be; a bit KOL-y, southern rock with a bit of a saxophone jive and a rather grand bassline. It's very cool and well worth listening, so go on. Click the bloody link, you lot. The Weeds, Brother In The Night

Airy Elliott-Smith-tinged americana-pop! (I like that, americana-pop. Nice phrase). Kurt Vile, Never Run Away. 

This is Elbow back when they were just beginning to get popular and weren't yet obsessed with that one bit of violin-work  and choral singing that makes all their other singles sound EXACTLY THE SAME. Anyway, I love this song, it's kick-ass northern pub-rock and it is FABULOUS.Not to be confused with the other Grounds For Divorce that I love. Elbow, Grounds For Divorce

And speaking of long hair, Sam Winchester.
I started watching Supernatural again earlier this week, and seriously? Are haircuts not a thing in America? Dean and Cas seem to manage not to have hair like Rapunzel, though. Or do they cut each others' hair? Or do angels not need haircuts? I don't know.

It's possible I'm over thinking this.

Moll x

P.S. Chapter eleven of The Gargoyle Of St John's is up - please read, please vote!

If you read Gargoyle at any point before chapter twelve goes up, either comment on this post or send me an email (address in the side bar) with your favourite song that I have or haven't posted and I'll mention them all in one big reader-appreciation post, because I love you all and you're all brilliant. :)

mx