The New Classics is a reoccurring segment in which we examine our favorite indie releases that are bound to replace our parent’s “classic rock” stash hidden in the attic or the basement. These aren’t reviews, these are uneditied testimonies and opinions about why we love what we love. Can we get a witness?

Words by Christopher Carosi

Album: Alligator
Artist: The National
Released: 2005
Label: Beggars Banquet
Produced by: The National and Peter Katis

Alligator simultaneously possesses every nervous and triumphant bone (tragically) in the human body. This band’s genius is how they play directly into any heart, and pull on memories that seem real to the listener. It’s fucking uncanny. I know a few reasons why.

Firstly, the band’s name is unassuming and so general that by its nature and sound can house all of these feelings and experiences (like The Smiths), which is a welcoming thing, as if the project of the band is for everyone that needs it. The consciousness of the songs is very sensitive as if this consciousness can let nothing go, this works for so many reasons that I won’t get into because you don’t want to read them. It’s psychological and about youth, to put it simply. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, and like The Smiths, the voice of the band is this crooning, failed lounge singer who puts melodies above words, and might be the only non-instrumentalist in the band, who was born to sing.

The fact that I’m taking on this review means enough for the album, because for me it has this shamanistic quality. Matt Berninger’s vocals have a lot to do with it, much like Morrisey’s did for The Smiths. A vocalist so good at what he does and singing so in line with the best-composed rock you’ve every heard, that it’s a recipe for boners and wetness. The music behind the voice is full of texture and life, rich details, tiny explosive moments. The Dessner brothers do this by providing point/counterpoint guitars, hardly out in front but backing up what is, namely the singer and the drums. The rhythm section, especially on Alligator, is what drives the songs; the Devandorf brothers provide clear and ear-distracting rhythms that hypnotize and funnel the emotion. Knapps and I still can’t figure out the time signature in the verse for “Karen”. Both the textured guitars and ridiculous drum and bass ensure multiple listens, with new layers and meaning coming up or going down, depending on mood/time/noise pollution/analog or digital/sex/hunger/mental state. AND the context isn’t jazz or electronica or some “post-modern” bullshit, but indie rock. I think part of the reason why these guys are so fucking cool is that it seems like they’re the band of your dreams, balancing perfectly on that point between self-deprecation and over-confident rebellion, between heartbreak and the blues, between songwriting and improvisation, maybe in the same song. It’s ridiculous, and now I’ll stop dick-sucking, I promise. Alright, I lie.

A band like this values the songs, and the work they put into them can be heard on each track. It promotes rabid fandom, and conversation about favorite songs, moments, etc. When a song fails to deliver like the others though, even by a little, it sounds like filler. That’s great album-making right there. What’s amazing is how these guys have kept up cover-to-cover masterpieces since Alligator, pumping out not one (Boxer) but two (High Violet) in the span of 5 years.

So the reason I chose Alligator over Boxer is this: the “consciousness” of the former is much more unstable, and in that way reminiscent of a younger, impulsive set of characters/feelings. Boxer, it can be argued, is a more focused record, a more mature record. True, true. Boxer is about growing up, it’s about marriage and graduation and becoming a yuppie, thus its sound is more uniform. But Alligator is about being a fuck-up, living in the moment, perhaps (to me) going to college and not deserving a goddamned thing, but taking and losing and crying and feeling great, from day-to-day. The sound and feeling are all over the place, the energy is much more alive and in front, not understated like Boxer. It’s more controversial white-people-in-America shit, every suburban soul in America LOVES The National. But, as Todd Kappelt once said, “This stuff really happens.” Believe me, choosing between the two was like choosing between Geno and Sid. I had to do it for the purposes of this beautiful blog.

It deals with an array of competing emotion and ideas, all to build this character of an Alligator, someone who has fun at their own expense. There’s definitely a lack of self-preservation on this album, a lot of reckless behavior and feeling. A lot of it is almost embarrassing to concentrate on, when your own memories clash with what’s being performed. There’s insular apologetic songs like “Secret Meeting” and “Karen”, which are filled to the brim with neuroses. There is full-on misfit love featured in “City Middle” as argumentative conflict and in “The Geese of Beverly Road” as big-hearted Romanticism. “Abel” is about the inherent failed contract with God and law in men, while “The Daughters of the Soho Riots” is inherent failure in relationships. “Val Jester” is an intense concentration on a single mistake, and “All the Wine” represents a consciousness in complete disregard of any serious feeling.

However, and this is the big reason why The National feels so close to so many good people, the songs can be proven to be about actual things in our lives. For example, “Friend of Mine” is about trying to find John Tronsor in Oakland, because that fucker is a free-spirit. “Baby, We’ll Be Fine” is definitely a narrative of a drunken little fling I had into the wee hours, and having to get up for work in like 5 minutes. Dude, it’s all there. The lyric, the emotion of the music. The availability of projecting one’s own feeling onto the songs is so ready, more than a lot of bands in existence. The music is highly composed, from the back to front, and this level of songwriting makes the listener trust so much what’s going on. Great composition serves an authoritative stamp on the performance. By the time “Mr. November” has ripped through your mind, you wonder briefly just what ha-ha-happened. If all of these competing and conflicting sounds and feelings can coexist and then you realize, of course it fucking can. It’s like me. I’m angry and happy and stupid all the time. Huh.

I can appreciate the fact that this album represents a younger my-generation, because Boxer is the next logical place for it to go. But what is simply undeniable is the strength and timelessness of honesty, in which Alligator is so powerful a listen that it’s beyond my capabilities as a writer to conceive a standard for it (thanks for reading my attempt). I can rarely listen to the whole thing once through without feeling so energized that I have to go outside, do something, write something, have someone, anything. “Abel” alone can make me into a madman, that songs hits me so hard every time. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have compiled a list of incidents that involved young men doing incredibly dangerous things within 10 minutes of listening to that song.

As I ramble to a close, I wonder just how important one album can possibly be to a certain frame of existence. I know this, when I think of these songs, I am immediately teleported to a simpler time in my life and I am reminded of the friends and lovers and all manner of crazy shit that has gone down. Then I realize it wasn’t that crazy because I’m a lucky American white male living out of the government’s pocket, blind since birth. Then I listen to “Abel”.

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

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