The National's eighth record came from prosaic beginnings. Director
Mike Mills -- not to be confused with the bassist from
R.E.M., as he so often is -- invited
Matt Berninger to collaborate, a notion that quickly spawned two projects: a short film from
Mills and a new album from
the National, both entitled
I Am Easy to Find.
Mills is credited as a co-producer on the album, a bit of a stretch considering how he is by no means a musician, but his contributions did indeed help the album take shape. Beginning with a clutch of outtakes from
Sleep Well Beast,
the National and
Mills formed these scraps into the elusive, shape-shifting
I Am Easy to Find. Lasting a lengthy 64 minutes,
I Am Easy to Find paints intimacy on an epic scale: everything sounds hushed, as private as a secret, yet there's a sweep to the execution. Considering this grand scale along with the album's origins and
Mills' presence, it's tempting to call
I Am Easy to Find cinematic, yet that suggests a possible narrative cohesion to its 16 songs when the National aren't interested in a story, they're concerned with impressions. The songs of
Matt Berninger and
Carin Besser are contained units where each line fits together tightly, an aesthetic that ties together the album without quite lending the album a theme; if this music is cinematic, it's the equivalent of an evening's worth of tasteful experimental films. What distinguishes the album is
the National's openness toward collaboration, a notion that is not limited to
Mills. Highlighted by
Sharon Van Etten and
Gail Ann Dorsey -- a veteran of
David Bowie's band --
the National invite a number of female vocalists to sing on the album, lending
I Am Easy to Find a welcome sense of openness. Where
the National can often seem hermetically sealed -- such insularity is a key to their appeal --
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. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine