I Am Easy to Find
A sprawling, cinematic masterwork of collaborative chamber pop, trading the band's typical guitar-driven tension for lush orchestral arrangements and a chorus of female voices.
A sprawling, cinematic masterwork of collaborative chamber pop, trading the band's typical guitar-driven tension for lush orchestral arrangements and a chorus of female voices.
Collaborative expansion
Overlapping female voices crowd the microphone, cooling the usual late-night anxiety of these songs into something shared and spacious. Strings and soft electronic pulses replace the heavy drumbeats, making you feel like you are walking through a quiet, half-lit house where everyone is awake and whispering.
The instrumentation foregrounds piano notably more than the catalogue usually does.
Critics warmly welcomed the album's collaborative, experimental spirit, broadly praising how the addition of multiple female vocalists and guest musicians brought a fresh, emotionally intense dimension to the songwriting. While some reviewers noted that the record's looser, wandering structure might challenge certain listeners, the consensus largely admired it as a bold and deeply human evolution.
“Perhaps the only elements missing from this overegged affair are, crucially, excitement and anything so much as a memorable melody”Read review
“Talented guests and solid songwriting make for an overall welcome record”
“This eighth National album is the accompaniment to a 25-minute art-house movie. And yet – lush, profound, experimental – it’s also much more than that”Read review
“The album as a whole falls short of The National’s best work. Yet it is, in places, an admirable detour”Read review
“Indie-rock standard-bearers pivot to collectivist art-making with 70+ musicians and a host of women’s voices, to potent effect”Read review
“The band’s widest-ranging and most surprising effort to date”Read review
“With a cast of female vocalists guiding and redirecting the songs, the National’s eighth album is their largest, longest, and most daring”Read review
“The National’s eighth album is not as easy to locate or to live with, as its title suggests, but it contains passages of sublime beauty and grace”
“The band’s eighth album feels like an old friend you’re pleased to keep around, but it suffers from spiritual jet lag”Read review
“With new voices, new avenues of exploration and new lyrical viewpoints, The National, alongside producer-director Mike Mills, once again show their ability to reinvent themselves to produce something that is more than just an album”Read review
“I Am Easy to Find 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”Read review
“A record of hairpin turns, detours and loose ends, of memories in your grasp and then slipping away. It’s a damn fine National album”Read review
Cassette uses generative AI to enrich its catalog. How we use AI →
