While Rolling Stone continues to gush over Vampire Weekend as the last surviving indie rock giants, The National shows you why they're the rightful owner of that title with their latest effort "I Am Easy to Find". Admittedly, "Trouble Will Find Me" and "Sleep Well Beast" started to feel a little safe, but their newest album has them at their riskiest and most exploratory since 2011's "High Violet". The haunting vocals floating over the brilliant digital arrangement of "You Had Your Soul With You" sets the tone right out of the gate that this is not going to be the easy listening you may have come to expect from the band recently. But the thing that really resonated with me was, like "The Boxer" and "Alligator", the emphasis is placed back on the vocals. Even though there's heavy instrumentation throughout, the lyrics really shine in the opening half of this record in a way they haven't in some time for this band. Now the experimentation and extended song lengths definitely stray a bit too far in the latter half of the album but still, you have to commend a band this deep into their discography for pushing themselves creatively like this. Even if the experiment starts to unravel a bit on its sprawling hour long running time.
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