The National - I Am Easy To Find (May 17, 2019) Album • Page 75

I don’t have too many extremely unpopular opinions but outside of importance I think that National has made significantly better music than REM. Boxer quite easily 7 million times better than any rem album that isn’t automatic for the people for me

 

I don’t know. I run across a lot of people who don’t even know who the National is, but could easily name a handful of REM songs.

 

i like SWB a lot. it isn't a them losing steam thing. it's just a very bad album.

 

Yeah I was pretty disappointed with this album, but I'm a big fan of just about everything before it, particularly HV, TWFM, and SWB

 

I’m comfortable calling IAETF their New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Both are great, long albums with some questionable inclusions that some fans think suck and others love.

 

thats it for me folks

 

The sheer avalanche of shit takes over the last couple pages. The mind reels.

 

we need to stop comparing new rock bands to REM. REM will always win, they're fucking REM. all-time great band in any genre

doesn't mean The National aren't good as hell on their own, entirely separate terms. fwiw I'm in the club that thinks IAETF was a home run

 

i mean, yeah. i love the national lol. that is the entire point i’m making.

 

I am easy to find is good

scrap the interludes and a song or two and it’s comfortably tier 2 national. Probably is as is imo.

 

I tend to think of albums that last for longer than 50 minutes in terms of how well I feel they justify their length. There are lots of ways to justify long albums: exploring a wide range of musical ideas; excavating deep stories or themes; just having a shit ton of top-tier songs; etc. The new Gang of Youths album is a great example of something that is super long, but earns the extra real estate.

I feel like there's probably a great 40 or 45-minute album there with I Am Easy To Find. The problem is, it's 64 minutes long, and (IMO) it doesn't do anything to really warrant all that time. It's 20 minutes longer than Boxer and has half as many great songs.

 

I just skip the interludes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Love IAETF. Made the band fully click for me, and I formed a really strong attachment to it when it came out. Probably still my favorite.

Really though, you can rank the last 6 albums in any order and I’d probably agree with it at some point

 

even if you took the best songs from it and cut down to 40 minutes, it’s still comfortably outside of their top 4 or 5 albums

 

I still stand by my original point that R.E.M. were inspired by the National and that the National sold more records than R.E.M. between 1989 and 1994.

 

If you cut it down to 49 minute it would EASILY be their best.

 

No

 

I like IEATF a lot, but you could trim it. If you drop the interludes (which add nothing imo) and lose one of the two six-minute songs (I'd drop So Far So Fast), you have a great ~50 minute album.

 

do you hate this band or something

 

I enjoy them very much thank you

 

I can’t rank them. I can only put them into tiers.

SWB/Boxer
Alligator/TWFM/IAETF
HV/Cherry Tree EP
SSFDL
TN/Virginia EP

 

I've said it before I'm sure but I think SWB/I Am Easy to Find is the most interesting they've been as a band since Boxer. And that's not to say HV and TWFM aren't good, they obviously are, but I was a lot more worried they were in their legacy days 2 albums ago than I am now.

 

Just checked in on this thread. Y’all chose violence today. I personally love IAETF but it’s nowhere near their best.

 

I listened to this album once, enjoyed it, and never listened to it again

 

the ideal experience honestly. why listen to something enough times to dislike it