I sang in a band in high school. Nothing big. We never had any gigs. Come to think of it we never even had a name (my suggestions of Proust In Love and Jennifer Said Forever both got shot down.) It was a lot of fun though. Just me and some friends getting together and playing songs we loved. Things got complicated when we tried to start writing our own stuff though. Mostly the problem revolved around my disagreements with out guitar player over his lyrics. I said then, and I stand by this now, that if you are the lead singer of a band, your job is most closely comparable to that of a used car salesmen. You have to make people believe whatever you are saying. Now for all my gifts at bullshiting, I just would not tell the women I love (and my girlfriend will vouch for me on this) that she was in anyway similar to an ocean breeze. Not my style. Maybe Sting can do it but I can’t. In the end it all comes down to credibility. Matt Berninger, the lead singer of The National, has that credibility in spades.
On their third album, Alligator, The National expand the dim, almost drunken sound that established on 2003’s Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers moving in a direction that is paradoxically both more accessible and more inscrutable. Much of what made Sad Songs so captivating a listen the first few times around is here but Alligator has more force behind it. The band finally seems confident of itself and it shows on the LP.
Album opener Secret Meeting is the first sign of change. Berninger rails off stream of consciousness lyrics in his deliciously deadpan baritone over delicate guitar pickings, summing it all up by saying “I had a secret meeting/in the basement of my brain.” Part of what makes the song and the album so much more endearing than their two previous efforts is the emergence of a sense of humor. Taken on face value almost every song on here is too maudlin to be enjoyed but songs like Lit Up with it’s description of gun totting bodyguards is almost too funny not to enjoy. All The Wine is the type of upbeat smart ass song I always wanted Arab Strap to write (“I’m a perfect piece of ass/like every Californian/so tall I take up half the street.”) These songs loosen up the listener for the more serious songs.
As a band, The National occupy an interesting place in music, in that much of their work can be described in terms of other bands and yet there is no mistaking that these are independent works. Friend Of Mine veers ever so close to being a Silver Jews retread but it’s just forceful enough to make it on its own. Val Jester is note perfect Tindersticks with only drummer Bryan Devendorf’s light brush strokes and Padma Newsome’s violin. It’s also one of the weaker tracks of the album but that has more to do with the song being under thought.
The most omnipresent musical specter here though is the ghost of Leonard Cohen. Songs like Karen (“I wouldn’t got out alone into America”), Daughters Of The SoHo Riots and The Geese Of Beverly Roads look on the city as a dark, violent place full of lost souls and predators. Like Cohen augmenting his songs with sparse piano and guitar to emphasis the poetry in his lyrics, The National drop the guitars and drums to showcase Berninger’s captivating faux croon. Maybe it comes from the fact that the bands are natives of Cincinnati who moved to New York, but the five members of The National have a distinct distrust of the urban world. Throughout Alligator, the city is viewed as place where love dies in a sea of drugs and booze (Lit Up) and where all the good people we know vanish (Friend Of Mine) until all we can hope for is a pat on the back from the boss (Baby, We’ll Be Fine.)
That is until the end of the album on Mr. November where Berninger summons up every last drop of credibility he has left and over a rush of guitars and drums shouts “I’m Mr. November/I won’t fuck us over.” In our own way, I’m pretty sure we’ve all said that to someone; and what makes the song so gripping is that the whole thing is done without irony. They mean every word of it, and well it’s there borough mates The Hold Steady that get all the Springsteen comparisons, I’m gonna namedrop the poet laureate of Asbury Park here. The Boss once said that “It’s hard to be a saint in the city.” I think the boys in The National would agree with him. I also think they would say that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.
