Review Summary: Half-way between post-punk lounge and typical 00s indie rock, Alligator is inseparable from its creators. Its bittersweet and seemingly impenetrable, but it wouldn't be the tough, rewarding love affair if it weren't so difficult.
If listening to The National conveniences me of anything, it’s that there is no one sadder than an aging hipster. Much akin to the Wren’s Meadowlands, Alligator makes a strong argument that no amount of Vonnegut books and limited pressed vinyl can give a 30 year old hipster a happy relationship in a happy home. Over the 13 tracks on Alligator, Matt Berninger tries to convince us that he isn’t the reason his relationships have failed and that people just don’t see his good side. Yet, the disgruntled, haunting voice like a romantic Ian Curtis and the odd line in the song brings to light how much Berninger is hiding from himself and wants to escape from someone he has lived with for more than 3 decades.
Very seldom does a band come out in this age without being in their mid-20s and when they do its young bands like Bloc Party and Arctic Monkeys. The aura of a band like The National is much more restrained and perfected, than much younger, vibrant bands like The Walkmen and Cold War Kids. The music, like the lyrical content, isn’t exactly meant to connect with the young and wild but slowly sneaks in. We’ve never fully experienced Berninger’s side of things, but we can connect with it in the slightest of ways even if it is simply the innate emotion of grief and depression. While Boxer is a depressed record trying to make it to third base in a young relationship, Alligator was a depressing album having the time of its life in the city with brief moments of retrospective regret.
It’s almost odd how much critics and fans agree that The National take time to seek into your musical palette, so much so that it seems odd for someone to completely take to the album on first listen. “Secret Meeting” is hell of an opener that resembles very little outside its U2-esque chorus (that would bleed into the more pedestrian “Lit Up”), while “Abel” and “Mr. November” are all the lyrical grievances of the album tied into two vocal based tracks that spit fire and brimstone. The rest of the album are ballads of the heart and the heartless, as even “Karen” celebrates that his current girlfriend can take him being an asshole and “All The Wine”s regret of headstrong alcoholism never comes at the right time (just like real life). “Baby come over I need entertaining” and “she goes, she's gone” are lines that solidify Berninger’s description as Nick Drake and Ian Curtis’s love child (think of all meds this guy must take!), but the nuances and mood of the band are all their own.
A Post-punk rhythm section by the Devendorf brothers and OK Computer-lite guitars by the Dessner brothers (with Peter Katis’s production used to a great effect, as on Interpol’s debut) with the rare piano fills and orchestration paint every track on here as songs that could bloom even brighter in a live setting and sink in even deeper on a bad drive home. Everything on here might not come together in the way that Peter Katis’s other projects have, but it’s to a greater effect as everything stands strongly on its own and all the musicians personalities mix. Much like Joy Division, it’s easy to forget that an excellent band is bringing these brilliantly charged vocals to life. Berninger sadly admits “All the most important people in New York are nineteen” and admits his bitter standing in life as he sings “I used to be carried in the arms of cheerleaders”, but who are the young and beautiful going to turn to when things aren’t going right? And when all the hipsters who didn’t make it grow up one day, will they have created something as relevant, powerful, and moving as Alligator? Being a failure has suddenly become one of the distinguishing traits of this great band and it’s one that anyone can relate to.
