The National shares I Am Easy To Find short film featuring music from its new album

The National’s latest, I Am Easy To Find, arrives this Friday, but right now you can watch an accompanying short film helmed by Oscar-nominated director Mike Mills (20th Century Women), who built his vision from the album’s lyrics and early demos. As such, its 24-minute exploration of one woman’s life, from birth to death, is set against versions of songs like “The Pull Of You,” “Quiet Light,” “Oblivions,” “Rylan,” and the title track that you won’t hear on the final album. It makes sense, then, that Mills calls the film and the album “playfully hostile siblings that love to steal from each other.”

He adds, “The National gave me the stems for their songs, some were sketches some were finished and encouraged and allowed me to create my own versions of the songs to score the film. The album then features different versions of these same seven songs—and nine new songs which sometimes refer to the themes, texts, ideas from the film—but are their own work, their own piece of art,” says Mills.