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The National’s “I Am Easy To Find” is the eighth release from this brooding and melancholy band and, if possible, their music has become even more cinematic with the addition of an Oscar winning filmmaker overseeing the production.

The new album comes just eighteen months after their grammy winning “Sleep Well Beast.” They usually take much longer but lead singer Matt Berninger says the chance to work with filmmaker Mike Mills sped up their output. Berninger likens it to the bonus round on Galaga where, he says “you don't get killed because there's a force field around you, so you just fly around and blow everything up.”   

The Mills film and The National’s album are two separate entities and don’t rely on each other for reference but the difference Mills made in the production of the album gave the band a different outlook on their own music and respond most notably by including an all female vocal section throughout the album, Sharon Van Etten among them.

Berninger’s conversational-like singing and writing along with Aaron Dessner’s instrumental experimentation have been the cornerstones of the National's sound for almost twenty years and on “I Am Easy To Find” they have found new collaborators to help them continue to reinvent themselves.