2. “Quiet Light”

The string arrangement on this track is extremely visceral.

Aaron Dessner: What you hear is actually two string orchestras. Bryce [Dessner] orchestrated the album, and he wrote that crazy part at the end, where the orchestra starts to fall off a cliff. And then there’s another more recent recording in there that was a response to the way Mike was turning off all the guitars and leaning into the strings and drums for the film’s score.

MB: This was an example of Mike taking our ideas and grabbing pieces that he liked and using them as paint. The bridge of this song—“I can’t help it/It’s you that I think I hear in the quiet light”—is the first thing you hear in the film. When he did that, I felt like I was in such good hands. I saw he had an idea for this whole thing, so I said, “Let’s just follow him.”

3. “Roman Holiday”

This is a love song with references to Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe. Were you inspired by Smith’s memoir Just Kids?

MB: I am a huge fan of that book, but I was actually looking at Judy Linn’s book of Patti Smith photos. A lot of the imagery in it is of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe when they were really young, just hanging out in their apartment: dressing up, taking pictures of each other, looking cool. It’s such a beautiful portrait of pals, such a romance. And then there’s also a line I took from Patti Smith’s Instagram, a comment she sent to somebody who had just lost someone to suicide: “Please think the best of him.” I found it incredibly moving. I was just obsessed with her kindness and her wisdom in the face of so many sad things.

4. “Oblivions”

This is a song about marriage that features Bryce’s wife, Pauline de Lassus, on lead vocals. The lyrics zero in on the worries that come with longtime companionship: “You won’t walk away, will you?” What were you thinking about when you wrote it?

MB: You don’t understand what marriage is until you’re way into it: Are you going to be there every time I collapse? Every time I change? This is a funny pop song about that promise you make and what it means to follow through.

MM: I think it’s the masterpiece on this record. We had a lot of different singers try it, even Matt, but when we heard Pauline’s version, it was like, Oh, there’s the character! You have to find the body and soul who told that story.

5. “The Pull of You”

You have been performing this song for a while. How has it evolved?

AD: Everything you hear musically on this track existed for [2017’s] Sleep Well Beast, but it just didn’t fit on that album. Sometimes Matt rewrites the lyrics to a song and we like it less, but this one took a leap.

There are some allusions in the lyrics: The line “Here at the approach of the end of everything” is a reference to a man’s changing perspective with old age from the Philip Roth novel Sabbath’s Theater.

MB: That is, yeah. Thank you. I forgot who I stole that from. I have to alert our lawyer to that. [laughs] You know what? I probably didn’t even read the whole book. Most of the time, I’m quoting back covers and bookshelves, not necessarily books.

6. “Hey Rosey”

This is a particularly vulnerable song about embracing uncertainty in a relationship. When I think about the band’s early music, it had more of a masculine bent compared to your more recent work. Has that been a conscious shift for you?

MB: We started becoming less of a “dude rock” band a long time ago, but maybe it wasn’t until we started bringing actual voices—not just the words I sing written by [Berninger’s wife and co-lyricist] Carin [Besser]. It’s just changed naturally. For obvious reasons, we’ve all gotten to know women better since we were single in our 20s and 30s in New York. We’ve also just grown up and gotten to know ourselves better. Back then, I found myself wanting to be a Nick Cave or a Tom Waits or a Leonard Cohen. My writing was obsessively conscious of being an awkward man. And then I became less of an awkward man.

AD: When Matt and Carin got together, she very quickly played an impactful role.

MB: She named Boxer! She saw us struggling, in this fight with our identity.

AD: And then Matt had his daughter, and I had my daughters. It’s just been this progression.

7. “I Am Easy to Find”

What about this song felt representative of the project as a whole, to be the title of the record and the film?

MM: It was an intuitive choice. I like how it’s sort of a lie: No one is easy to find—you yourself aren’t easy to find.

MB: What makes you you? It’s about how often we lose an idea of ourselves, or we can’t catch up to who we’re becoming. And you can be found—that’s why we’re not alone. When you get totally fucked up and you’re in that dark space, you can send a little text to somebody. You can connect.

8. “Her Father in the Pool”

This is the first of several interludes sung by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. These tracks are completely unlike anything on any previous National album. Mike, as a producer, were their distinct sounds you wanted to avoid?

MM: I became the guitar naysayer in the room. I love the guitars, but because they’re such a signature part of the National’s sound, I was like, “This is an opportunity to change.” I love that you can feel the band in a piece that doesn’t have any of the members in it, and what’s neat about this record is that their DNA got a little broader.

How would you describe that DNA?

MM: It has this romantic darkness that I ultimately find very healing to listen to. There’s some dissonance and an ability to hold onto that dissonance—that’s the healing part.

9. “Where Is Her Head”

In the film, these lyrics are part of a children’s book that the father reads to the protagonist. Was that a pre-existing story or was it composed specifically for the film?

MB: It’s expensive to license an actual book for a film, so Mike had to write one himself.

MM: I have a kid so I know all about children’s books!

With lead vocals from Aaron and singer-songwriter Eve Owens, it is the record’s closest thing to a big pop moment.

AD: Maybe because there’s something more straightforward to how I sing, it feels different than what Matt would write—maybe I should feel embarrassed about that. [laughs] And then Eve has this bell-clear English voice, which made it even brighter. It’s fun to play live; it goes off the rails in a really nice way.

MM: Living in this moment in time, I was like, “We have to fuck shit up a little bit more. The world is not gentle right now.”

10. “Not in Kansas”

This one is... a lot! There are references to the Strokes, R.E.M., “alt-right opium,” and punching Nazis. There are also several abrupt interruptions that splice in a choral arrangement of “Noble Experiment” by ’90s indie-rock group Thinking Fellers Local Union 282. How did this one originate?

MB: What was the name of the instrumental you sent me, Aaron?

AD: “Everything to Everyone.” [laughs]

MB: That must be what happened—I took it as an invitation. I was walking around this little Danish town north of L.A. that was totally empty and listening to this instrumental on repeat. The music was so addictive. I opened up an email to myself and started writing. The original version is about 10 minutes long and it’s got 17 more stanzas.

How did it get edited down?

MB: It was a good example of our collaborative process with Mike. I told him, “The thing that’s really good about this is its length—its maximalist approach.” And he said, “Totally, I understand.” And two days later, he sent it back with 17 stanzas cut out and that cover of “Noble Experiment” in the middle. It was an example of him listening and understanding what I wanted and then having a better idea.

Do you remember any of the verses he cut?

MB: Yeah, I have them right here. “I’m giving 20s to schizophrenic missing mothers in my neighborhood/Leaning in the door/You’re always asking, ‘Why not ask for more?’” I refer to my Wiccan masseuse, who I also get weed from. Little Caesar’s gets mentioned—I must have been hungry.

When we perform this song live, I feel like a gymnast doing this really long, complicated routine where I just have to land all these points or else I totally fall on my face. But everybody’s embracing all the faceplants. Too many shows go right; it gets boring after a while.

11. “So Far, So Fast”

This song gets pretty far-out, musically. It’s nearly seven minutes long and evolves into an almost psychedelic jam with synths, strings, and a choir.

AD: Mike was generally pushing us to lean into some of our artier tendencies. He says all the art he likes is pretentious, so don’t be afraid to be pretentious!

MM: They are really hard on themselves and they can self-edit themselves down to this very hunched-shoulders version of a song. So I think it was neat for them was to have a fan in the room. I would be like, “That is so amazing!” and that’s so unlike how they are with each other.

12. “Dust Swirls in Strange Light”

This song is performed entirely by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, who sings some of Mike’s subtitles from the film. Mike, how did you feel when you first heard it?

MM: It was a total surprise. I don’t know if I’m just kissing my own ass, but I love this song. I don’t feel like I wrote the lyrics; I feel like I was appropriated in a way that was fun and surprising and smart. I was pillaging from their stuff, so to be counterpillaged was a great honor.

13. “Hairpin Turns”

This song’s standalone video, also directed by Mike, is beautiful. How does Israeli dancer Sharon Eyal fit into the narrative of the film and record?

MB: We were talking about the film being the portrait of a life, but the record captures an afterlife. So Sharon Eyal is the embodiment of the record’s continued soul. Mike got me to dance for the video, too, which I wasn’t expecting. I told him, “I don’t dance like that.” And he’s like, “But you dance on stage all the time!" And I said, “Well, that’s because I’m drunk and high and everybody’s screaming at me.” I was nervous about it, but I like the video.