Graceless – The National
Every couple years we get a new album from The National. And every couple years, I experience that album in almost precisely the same way. On the first few listens, I enjoy it but nothing quite grabs me. After a few weeks, I find I’m going back to it more and more – and one song has leapt out to exclaim its brilliance. After another month or two, our relationship settles into a slow burn. These are never my favorite records of the year, but they’re always among my top 10.
With Trouble Will Find Me, the familiar pattern certainly has repeated itself. The one sublime track (Graceless) matches up very well with the one standout track on each of their previous records (Mr. November, Apartment Story, Bloodbuzz Ohio). It’s probably the most aggressive song on the record, which is always what manages to turn my head the quickest. And it’s got all the key features that make this a truly wonderful band. Berninger’s distinctively smoky voice, the tightly wound guitar lines, and above all that insistent drumming. And when it all comes together, it is sheer perfection. The final minute or so of this song might be my favorite musical moment of the year.
While nothing else on the record is nearly so great, there is a lot to love on every track. I Should Live in Salt kicks off the record with a stately march that works wonders with the space in between notes. Sea of Love and Don’t Swallow the Cap play in the same anthemic terrain as Graceless. Slipped and Pink Rabbits dig deep into the realm of choked-back tears and brave faces. And Demons features a lyric that sums up pretty much everything you need to know about this band: “When I walk into a room, I do not light it up…FUCK.”
For all that people talk about the genius of The National being their restraint, the delicate layers of their songcraft, restraint for its own sake does not make for very exciting music. What really distinguishes this band is their ability to use subtle gestures to convey a deep well of longing, madness, pain, and terror. The tightly wound construction of their music, the difficult-to-penetrate steadiness of it, reveals itself over time to be the stony calm of a general holding his troops together in the face of an overwhelming enemy force.
This band hasn’t released a bad song in a decade. While I can’t help but wish they could condense the magic a little bit more tightly and come out with a true masterpiece of an album, I am more than happy to take what they are offering.