Ohio-bred, New York-based quintet THE NATIONAL have already recorded two critically acclaimed albums ("The National" and "Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers"), but while your reviewer must profess relative ignorance where those records are concerned, "Alligator" is an accomplished, but quirky third floor to stop the elevator and jump in.
The National are comprised of two sets of brothers - Aaron (guitar, bass) and Bryce Dessner (guitar), Scott (bass, guitar) and Bryan Devendorf (drums) - and are topped off by vocalist Matt Berninger's dark brown baritone croon. They made "Alligator" in Bridgeport, Connecticut with Paul Mahajan (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV On The Radio) and Peter Katis (Interpol) at the desk, but really none of those bands impinge on The National's sound, which is broadly indie and guitar-driven, but not in any obvious, overdriven garage sense, or in the moody, brooding Interpol sense either.
Opener "Secret Meeting" gives you some idea of the semaphore signals the band send among themselves. Culminating in the weirdly sweet chorus of "I had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain", it's all tremulous, rolling indie guitars and hesitant drums and instilled with a likeable sense of paranoia. It finds Matt Berninger singing like a lugubrious cross between Freedy Johnston and Stephin Merritt and is extremely good.
Things just get more intriguing from thereon in. Occasionally, The National make a club-footed stab at rock'n'roll, which sounds like it doesn't really come naturally to them, but still sounds fascinating. Tracks like "Lit Up", "Baby, We'll Be Fine" and "All The Wine" are intense and celebratory and splurge into sunbursts of choruses, and often Berninger's lyrics are surprisingly witty and saracastic/ self-deprecatory. A good example is on "All The Wine", when he sings: "I'm a perfect piece of ass, like any Californian I take over the street." The press release refers to Tennessee Williams ( as does the song "City Middle") and a similar sense of observing weird intimacies and behavioural minutiae is a crucial part of The National's make-up - often coming when you least expect it - which is why a line as frank as "Karen put me in a chair, fucked me and made me a drink" sits so brilliantly in the middle of an apparently fraught track like "Karen."
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Despite the occasional attempt to increase the pace, "Alligator" rarely rocks in the accepted linear sense of the term. Recent single "Abel" is by some way the most brutal and visceral set-piece here and it remains fiery and expansive, with Berninger far more screamy and animated than usual. Nevertheless, The National's quirky and spiky oeuvre rarely fails to engage, whether it's cutting through with sharp guitar licks and serrated edges like on "Friend Of Mine" or making room for Padma Newsome's gentle, floaty orchestration on the chiming and regretful "Looking For Astronauts."
A diverse and secretive record that gradually reveals its charms, "Alligator" is not a beast to be under-rated. It more than adequately demonstrates The National are another fabulous deviation from the underground guitar norm and ravenously sinks its' teeth into both quirky folk-rock and chiming indie melancholy. And invariably draws blood when it does so.
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