:: Track Listing

1. Secret Meeting
2. Karen
3. Lit Up
4. Looking For Astronauts
5. Daughters of the Soho 6. Riots
7. Baby, We’ll Be Fine
8. Friend of Mine
9. Val Jester
10. All the Wine
11. Abel
12. The Geese of Beverly Road
13. City Middle
14. Mr. November

:: Record Review

The National

Alligator
(Beggar's Banquet; 2005)

Rating: 86%
Combined Rating: 84%


I always like it when a band surprises the living hell out of me. In this new-fangled age of instant access downloading and hyper-criticism, it’s hard to have an unmitigated experience where you know absolutely nothing about the band you’re hearing and, perhaps more importantly, about what other people think of them. It’s an experience that’s less and less likely to happen as we hit web pages daily to see where a new album stands, or make purchases on Amazon.com on a “people who like this also like this” basis. Fortunately, there were no raves or pans to pretext my happenstance internet-radio listen to The National.

About that first listen: as the fluttering, sweetly melodic dueling guitars of “Mr. November” wound their way around the lead-singer’s crooning voice, the pulsing-like-a-bloody-heart bass and the syncopated, rattling drums, I was pretty much gob-smacked for all of the song’s three minutes and change. As the song built to a blistering coda with the singer screaming over and over, “I won’t fuck you over,” a big smile pasted itself on my face. It’s not much, but little music discoveries like this are part of what keeps me going.

As fate would have it, the rest of the National’s fantastic third album Alligator lives up to the promise of “Mr. November.” Producing a quiet storm of Arab Strap/Tindersticks-style dive-bar ballads and updated Pixies rockers filtered through Modest Mouse, the band features lead-singer Matt Berringer’s heart-on-sleeve lyrics and oh-so-deep baritone. Tonally and lyrically somewhere between L. Cohen, Aidan Moffett and David Berman, Berringer’s cynical, world-worn love-letters and resigned croon work perfectly with the band’s rock steady rhythm-section. His effortless delivery suits the band’s tendency to jump from slow and mournful violin-tinged epics to ecstatic, melody-charged anthems. Berringer darkens the songs considerably with his odd ways, as in the otherwise Wilco-syrupy piano-driven “Karen”: “Karen put me in a chair / Fuck me and make me a drink”; and “It’s a common fetish for a doting man / To ballerina on the coffee table, cock in hand.” Elsewhere, Berringer is more cynical, like in “Lit Up”: “This sound I make / That only lasts a season / And only heard by bedroom kids / Who buy it for that reason.”

Berringer is backed expertly by two sets of brothers: Aaron/Bryce Dessner on guitars and Scott/ Bryan Devendorf making up the rhythm section. Like any great drummer, B. Devendorf doesn’t keep time so much as create, fracture and destroy. The Dessner bros guitar work is so spectacularly varied and intricate that it recalls yet another set of brother-guitarists for me: the Kadanes (Bedhead, then New Year). Their work is light and ethereal, packing a gossamer-enveloped wallop.

At times, the Dessner bros also recall Isaac Brock’s catchy, light as air riffs (think “Gravity Rides Everything”). It works wonders in songs like the ebullient “Friend of Mine” where their swirling, diaphanous strumming is propelled by a fat Kim Deal bass-line and thudding, staccato drumming. While in “Lit Up” they channel dreaded post-punk influences without turning it into a dance track. The Dessners’ guitars circle around opener “Secret Meeting” which builds to a fantastic chorus as Berringer sings and the rest of the band sings in the background that recalls a forgotten '90s indie anthem.

This is the kind of disc that is waiting to get huge at a liberal arts college campus near you, the bridge of “Mr. November” cascading out of iPod buds as the soundtrack to drunken rides home and just-missed dalliances. The National have a sort of ballsy swagger and haggard sincerity that makes their stylistic plurality hang together and not go down sour. They are the kind of band that has traceable roots (most are), but can’t help but sound fresh because of their innate ability to find that perfect melody at an unexpected moment.

Less interested in the instant gratification a plastic keyboard and a neon dance-beat have to offer, the National make music that is the sound of hanging out for too long in too many bars in Brooklyn, drinking and talking about all the bands that every really Mattered and trying to figure out how to place themselves in the discussion. While they’re nowhere near accomplishing that last part yet, with Alligator they’ve at least made an intriguing first step --- one that will help them make their way onto more than one dive-bar juke box, right alongside those bands that Matter. Sean Ford :: 20 April 2005 |