A man lay in the living room of his home, on a waiting room couch which he’d acquired as a trade for a favor from a friend whose business had failed. He had purposefully positioned the small couch in front of his stereo, with his right ear pointed toward the booming speakers. With a shooter glass of gin pressed to his chest, his feet dangled over the edge of the faded, light green loveseat. With The National’s Trouble Will Find Me spinning on the turntable, tears began to well and eventually stream down his face as he listened.
This was a sight I beheld at the age of 19, while living with my first boyfriend, a man twenty years my senior. The National was one of his favorite bands, and their sixth studio album, Trouble Will Find Me, had just dropped. Released in 2013, Trouble was met with critical acclaim, but was described by some tastemakers as the most lighthearted in the band’s discography. Hard to believe as Trouble Will Find Me is a collection of songs written about death, addiction and other mental afflictions. At 19, this album was devastating to me, despite having minimal life experience to truly understand why. A recent revisitation of the album shed new light on its relevance to the overall human experience.
Consisting of frontman, Matt Berninger, and brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner and Bryan and Scott Devendorf, The National was formed in 1999. With trombones, violas, french horns and cellos present, the band subtly incorporated orchestral instrumentation throughout Trouble. The work of collaborators such as Sufjan Stevens, Sharon Van Etten and Annie Clark of St. Vincent is also intertwined throughout the album. Folk songstress Van Etten lent her vocals to the heart-rending “This Is The Last Time,” which subsequently has been performed live by Clark and the band numerous times.
“I Should Live In Salt,” the album’s intro, sets the tone for Trouble Will Find Me. As the song’s narrator sings of crushing regret brought on by the loss of a lover, we welcome Trouble with a song that feels incredibly personal yet extremely relatable. Berninger, the band’s frontman, told Stereogum in an interview in 2013, that this was the song that really put Trouble into forward motion. “There was just something about that song,” he shared, “it had some kind of immediate quality to it and I think that’s when we realized we were in the middle of making a record.” He continued, saying, “We didn’t have any meetings and talks and arguments about what kind of record to make next. The record just kind of made itself.”
Trapped in a deep abyss with bricks tied to his feet in “Demons,” the song’s narrator admits defeat while plagued and suffering, with seemingly no end in sight: “Now there is no running from it / It’s become the crux of me / I wish that I could rise above it.“ Succumbing to the darkness, Berninger sings, “I sincerely tried to love it, I wish that I could rise above it.” One might wager that this track was inspired by addiction, as it aptly portrays the mental anguish, guilt, and shame addicts tend to face.
Berninger once shared with Rolling Stone his proclivity for the consumption of alcohol prior to performing, which may come as no surprise after listening to Trouble Will Find Me: “For me, the wine definitely helps me lose a little bit of my grip on my reality, which makes me less conscious of the situation,” he shared, “which makes me get into the songs a little more and it’s a zone I go to, which I love.” With every ounce of self-awareness, he continued, “Definitely wine is a crutch to get there and I won’t call it anything other than what it is, but I do love it.”
The looming theme of surrenderance and its relevance to water continues throughout Trouble Will Find Me, and into the next song, “Don’t Swallow the Cap.” Desperately, the narrator pleads for relief: “I need somewhere to be, but I can’t get around the river in front of me.” A personal favorite, the track bemusingly catalogs what could be perceived as the unrelenting torment that is often coupled with insomnia, or any other mental malady, really. Even Berninger didn’t quite understand the song’s premise while writing it, as he shared with Under the Radar: “I don’t actually know what that title is about. I was just singing along and free-associating with the ways words sounded, and weird little phrases ended up in there, and you don’t know where it comes from.” With exhaustion comes confusion, and the track’s narrator is seemingly caught in a fever dream. “Don’t Swallow the Cap” is incredibly vague, leaving the song’s interpretation up to the listener’s discretion.
The title of the album was derived from one of the more upbeat tracks, “Sea of Love.” On an episode of Song Exploder, Berninger described “Sea of Love” as “a big murky mess of all the feelings that happen between human beings.” Berninger went on to describe the ways the character within the song, Joe, is representative of someone who is well-educated but lacks the wits needed when falling in love, as the narrator breaks Joe’s heart in song: “If I stay here, trouble will find me / If I stay here, I’ll never leave.”
“Graceless” is a track that I’ve carried with me throughout the years, like a stuffed animal you keep long after you’ve grown far too old to really need it. A keepsake you return to for comfort. Throughout those years, I attempted to understand the lyrics, but as I evolved and the years carried on, its meaning evolved with me. It meant to me what I needed it to mean to me at the time. Berninger has shared previously that his lyrics sometimes purposely have only a faint whisper of a premise, in the hopes that the song’s vagueness may open the door to interpretation:
“Put the flowers you find in a vase / If you’re dead in the mind it’ll brighten the place / Don’t let ’em die on the vine, it’s a waste”
Longing and loneliness are ever-present on Trouble Will Find Me, so much that one might risk ripping open wounds that healed improperly by listening. The catharsis of the album’s confrontation with loss and death, and the interweaving of the beauty and suffering we experience beforehand, remains almost ten years after its release. The last track, “Hard to Find” somehow makes the reopening of old wounds worth it, as its main theme is one of acceptance. Berninger narrates a gentle and kind recounting of a love far removed: “You were beautiful and close and young / In those ways, we were the same / There’s a lot I’ve not forgotten, but I let go of other things / If I tried, they’d probably be / Hard to find”