The National, I Am Easy To Find: My problem with this band is that I don’t like it when they try to expand their artistic pallette. They added electronics to Sleep Well Beast so as to not get too formulaic, now here they are trying not just synths, but weird instrumentals, classical flourishes, and for some reason loads of female guest vocalists due to complaints that Matt Berninger is something of a limited singer? I dunno. Most of this is soft, slow and arty, and I end up predictably liking the uptempo drumming-heavy blow-out song, “Where Is Her Head,” as the obvious classic. The National can certainly do ballads, but they’re never going to be as consistent at it as Wilco. In addition to “Where Is Her Head,” some of the soft tracks I liked were “You Had Your Soul With You,” the title track (which quotes the lyrics to fellow Ohio band Guided By Voices’ “Echos Myron”…maybe someday the National will quote Pere Ubu), the six minute “Not In Kansas” (which name-checks R. E. M.’s “Begin The Begin,” the Strokes, and works a Thinking Fellers Union 282 song into the whole thing), and “Hairpin Turns” (which is just a really good ballad.) But egads, the weird stuff mostly doesn’t do much for it and I just find myself alcoholically itching for one more energetic blow out tune to go next to “Afraid Of Everyone,” “Sea Of Love,” “Graceless,” “Bloodbuzz Ohio”…you know the drill. At 16 songs and 64 minutes, this is their weakest album (and I’m not forgetting their debut); I’m just kind of Nationaled out, which is a sad note to end 2024 on considering that this was very much my “The National” year.

Buffalo Springfield, Last Time Around: This is so obviously the runt of the litter in the Springfield’s discography that it slipped my mind to even hear it eight or nine years ago when I did their first two platters. Not many reviews are even available; George Starostin liked it, as did the original Rolling Stone review (not that those matter much), but Neil Young (hilariously looking away from the rest of the band on the album cover!) hates it, and as for me, well, I didn’t much. It could be a lot worse for an album where the band was obviously disintegrating, but the only great song is “Merry Go-Round,” and that’s probably because it’s reminiscent of the band’s best track, “Flying On The Ground Is Wrong.” Neil’s “On The Way Home” has nice soul horns like Nick Drake’s “Hazey Jane II,” and Stephen Stills’ “Pretty Girl Now” has a noirish hint to it that I liked, but some songs, like Neil’s “I Am A Child” fade out before they’re even finished (??) and Richie Furay does this awful orchestral ballad “Not Quite The Time For Rain” or something like that which just blows, what a failed experiment. He redeems himself a bit with “Kind Woman” at the end, a nice ballad for people who would like a slower version of The Band’s “The Weight,” Stephen also does “Questions,” which was reworked into CSN(Y)’s far superior “Carry On,” and I guess it’s okay, but this album overall is a hastily finished half-hour of very soft folk/country rock. It’s not an expansion on what they were doing on their first two albums, nor is it something that points the way to anything good in their later careers. It’s just the runt, man!