Trouble Will Find Me

The National - Trouble Will Find Me
Critic Score
Based on 47 reviews
2013 Ratings: #25 / 1115
Year End Rank: #7
User Score
2013 Rank: #55
Liked by 125 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
The Guardian

It's the subtlety, and the self-awareness, that make this album exquisite.

100
The Independent

These are songs which acknowledge how the lurking power of feelings can just as readily numb, or stun, as drive one to paroxysms of cathartic emoting, and that the quiet ones are often the ones to watch out for.

100
The Arts Desk
The idiosyncratic rhythms turn the songs into living, unpredictable things.
95
Louder Than War
You cannot create an atmosphere and a mood that this record has intentionally, it has to come from the heart, and a battered and bruised one at that. The distance that the stories being told create between artist and listener actually makes it the darkest yet most compelling and absorbing album the band have ever made.
91
Pretty Much Amazing

A collection of remarkable songs by a group of musicians that compliment one another as well as any group over the last decade.

91
A.V. Club

Like the rest of the National catalog, Trouble Will Find Me is subtly insinuating; at first it seems almost free of hooks, then six listens later it’s difficult to get it unstuck. It burrows and then resides, first easy to forget then basically impossible.

90
The 405

It definitely sounds like an album by the National, but their latest set of songs is impeccably presented and delivered with the confidence of a band at their peak; a band who have figured themselves out.

90
Clash

‘Trouble Will Find Me’ contains the same qualities that made 2005’s ‘Alligator’ and 2007’s ‘Boxer’ albums so vital and personal. This set of tracks will stand with their most masterful.

90
Crack Magazine

Trouble Will Find Me is a nourishing, generous and nigh on flawless album.

90
DIY

While The National don't progress or indeed offer anything new to outstanding cynics, they instead rejoice in their strengths of detailing life and all its sorry baggage in the most beautiful of ways. 

90
Consequence of Sound

The end result is a new kind of National album — still dark and neurotic, obsessed with modern-day paranoia, but also bursting with an unlikely optimism and a very 2013 zest for life.

90
Spectrum Culture

The National maintains their modus operandi of zeroing in on individual alienation, the tales composing their sixth record standing as microcosmic examples of unfulfilled longing in a globalized, digital age.

88
Paste

The result evokes a tensile disaffection, something suppressed and never spoken. A deeply internalized album, it’s The National at their Nationalest.

88
Sputnikmusic

Not much on this album is immediate, and that’s a little disappointing, but more than any other National work, Trouble Will Find Me hints at depths upon depths hidden beneath the surface of thirteen very pretty songs.

85
Beats Per Minute

Here, the National are yet again standing atop the mountain they conquered nearly a decade ago. Unpredictable it is not, but taken as a study of sound and mood, it’s kind of perfect.

85
Under the Radar

Overall, Trouble Will Find Me is another accomplished entry for a band that doesn't seem to know how to do anything else.

84
Pitchfork

While the National never lacked confidence or craft, Trouble is an easily accessible and self-assured work, largely because it focuses on the visceral power of Berninger’s vocals and Bryan Devendorf’s inventive drumming.

80
Evening Standard
It’s relentlessly downbeat, never stepping out of the shadows, but always beautiful. The simple guitar notes and piano chords of Heavenfaced provide just enough sound to enthrall as the singer mutters, “If you lose me I’m gonna die.” His band are worth holding close as they quieten down but become ever stronger in their songwriting.
80
The Irish Times
Matt Berninger's baritone is more commanding than ever, and the collaborators, including Sufjan Stevens and St Vincent, do their parts without grandstanding.
80
Uncut

These songs instinctually shy away from grandstanding or big gestures; every time you think they’re headed for a fist-pumping chorus, they’ll veer off, or Berninger will shrug off the gravity with a lyrical clown move delivered in deadpan.

80
Mojo
They might shake, they might tremble, but The National remain a safe pair of hands.
80
NOW Magazine

On Trouble Will Find Me, they've perfected it, knowing when a hook should explode and when to hold back and let Berninger's signature, sombre baritone take over.

80
Q Magazine

For a band who sing so often about matters of the heart and emotional connection, much of Trouble Will Find Me sounds oddly on autopilot.

80
God Is in the TV

Superb, sublime and even when it’s melancholy, it’s not drag-you-down depressing.

80
Record Collector

Trouble Will Find Me manages to pull off the impressive trick of finding the band at once at their most direct and musically inventive.

80
The Observer

Six albums down the line, the late developers have perfected their ruminative rock, the beauty of their intricate arrangements ensuring the end product never sounds pedestrian.

80
The Sydney Morning Herald

In his beautiful, bruised baritone, Berninger's long chronicled unease over his band's stately, sombre, Tinderstickian rock. And so it goes across Trouble Will Find Me, where he can't shake thoughts of dying.

80
Rolling Stone

On much of Trouble Will Find Me as well, the terse phrases and single-tone exclamations of guitarists Bryce and Aaron Dessner hang around Berninger's baritone gravity like clouded starlight.

80
Loud and Quiet

The album is consistently very good and the song writing consistently better, but that moment of soul-shifting emotion, that moment the National have been so adept at creating, is missing.

80
FasterLouder

If you think you’ve outgrown them, you haven’t. Matt Berninger’s quandaries are not the sort that can be outgrown, they’re the sort that stalk you to the grave. That The National can wring beauty from these bleak inevitabilities is the reason that they matter.

80
Billboard

Whether or not they've tried to become more radio-friendly is not clear, although it's evident that the National are very satisfied at being the National, which includes few pop elements.

80
Time Out London

The propulsive sing-along ‘Demons’, warmly dilapidated ballad ‘Slipped’ and slow-burning mantra ‘Humiliation’ are bigger, poppier yet still lugubriously sexier than any of the singles from 2010’s Brit-nominated ‘High Violet’.

80
Exclaim!

Trouble Will Find Me burns slowly, but melds together more seamlessly with each listen.

80
The Skinny

The journey to Trouble Will Find Me is arguably the least dramatic the band has made yet. It’s less ornate than High Violet, but more dense, instrumentally.

80
American Songwriter

Trouble Will Find Me finds them maintaining the peak they reached with High Violet even when they trek out in new directions.

80
The Line of Best Fit

While Berninger and co. may not have the party lit up like “a birthday candle in a circle of black girls” as they once did, there will always be people who’d rather throw off the corny dancing and talk intelligently for an hour or two.

80
musicOMH

Following in the footsteps 2009’s High Violet, it finds The National shouldering the weight of the world and nearly collapsing beneath it, but doing so with unmatched grace and a steady hand.

80
NME

‘Trouble…’ is a collection of anthems, full of rich orchestral fanfares, bolstered by the cast and crew of New York’s finest.

75
Entertainment Weekly

The result is a painstakingly composed batch of tracks that struggle to break free from their gorgeously constructed prisons.

70
Drowned in Sound

Such albums always reward persistence, and it may be that the consensus will eventually find favour with Trouble Will Find Me. For now though, as an album, as a piece of art, it’s beautifully painted but the colour palette needs to expand substantially.

70
Tiny Mix Tapes

They have laid down some astounding tracks here, but as a whole, the album is not on par with any full-length the band have released since Alligator.

70
PopMatters

Trouble is a God-in-the-detail effort that features some of the National’s most intricate, meticulously crafted work to date, standing out with a deliberate stillness that makes you notice the barely made gestures and the small touches all the better.

70
AllMusic

For better or for worse, they perfected their sound the last time around, so it’s hard to fault them for sticking so close to the fire, especially on such a snowy night.

70
SPIN

Poised, cool, and impermeable, Trouble Will Find Me apotheosizes urban romance and its discontents, where conversations are monologues, parties are confessionals, and education and analysis are interchangeable.

70
No Ripcord

It’s difficult to complain when it sounds so good, and it’s easy to say “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but eventually you have to play the game on “Hard,” even if that means falling short once or twice before you come through.

60
Slant Magazine

While Trouble Will Find Me remains well crafted and satisfying, there's something inherently stultifying about it as well.

40
The Needle Drop

The National comes through with yet another syrupy, impenetrable ode to life's most blasé moments.

Nightwing734
80

poetic, calming, emotional, pretty, atmospheric, soft, stunning. <3

SnowyFighter
80

I want to fucking live in salt

Trouble Will Find me feels like The National going even further into the chamber pop direction that was sort of introduced on High Violet. This is their most popular album, and going into this I already knew a couple of the songs. I guess overall while this was a step down to High Violet, it’s still a great record. I really like the overall feeling to this album. It feels a bit darker to me for some reason. Maybe because of songs like Graceless, where the ... read more

MasterCrackfox
81

The National are one of the most consistent acts in terms of having a sound that works for them, one of which they rarely deviate from. However, the lush instrumentation of past feels almost soaring across Trouble Will Find Me, allowing The National to sound almost happy in their usual dreary tone.

Soaring in the sense that you feel uplifted by the melancholic feelings, soaring in the sense that even in times of dread and pain you can feel a sense of release. Trouble Will Find Me is that ... read more

haramthug
88

Gorgeous record from start to finish.

SpaghettiNipple
85

While maybe some tracks doesn't fully land for me, the best points on this album are SERIOUSLY good

steffinrobinson
90

Why isn't this at least labeled as a dream pop album, because this is atmospheric as hell

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Track List

1I Should Live in Salt
4:07
83
2Demons
3:31
87
3Don't Swallow the Cap
4:45
92
4Fireproof
2:58
82
5Sea of Love
3:41
87
6Heavenfaced
4:23
79
7This Is the Last Time
4:43
90
8Graceless
4:35
91
9Slipped
4:25
80
10I Need My Girl
4:05
86
11Humiliation
5:00
82
12Pink Rabbits
4:36
93
13Hard to Find
4:12
84
Total Length: 55 minutes
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Added on: March 21, 2013