National

I used to be carried in the arms of cheerleaders

(“Mr. November”)

Nothing like when I was in my room: I'm wearing a jacket and tie – my best clothes – waiting to be devoured by prying eyes. The image painted by a song like “Mr. November” is easy to associate with that of a politician crushed by the pressures of his role: “I'm the new blue blood, the great white hope,” the narrator repeats to himself, “I won't fuck it up – I'm Mr. November!”. Nothing is more human than a sense of inadequacy, and Matt Berninger reminds us of it every time he performs this song live, mic in hand, seeking physical contact with the crowd. Anxiety, desperation, clumsy self-persuasion, all screamed over a drum part that seems to collapse under its own frantic hits, with guitars snarling sharply. It brings to mind the image of the new US president, Nanni Moretti's newly elected pope (as played by Michel Piccoli), all those times we've backed out for fear of not being up to the task. “Mr. November,” one of the finest songs ever written about performance anxiety, is the moment the National became the National; it's the sound of a band discovering itself down to its most aching vein, reaching a new level of self-awareness.

One of the best-known anecdotes tied to indie rock mythology tells of how sparsely populated the band's early shows were on the 2005 “Alligator” tour, in contrast to the packed crowds reserved for the then-celebrated, now-forgotten Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Back then, Matt Berninger's (vocals), Aaron and Bryce Dessner's (guitars), Scott and Bryan Devendorf's (bass and drums) band wasn't yet counted among the new sensations of the New York underground. All Ohio natives, the five of them ended up living near each other in Brooklyn, in the Big Apple, by sheer coincidence in the late Nineties. Dissatisfied with their ordinary day jobs, they decided to form a band, building on the project the Dessner twins and Bryan Devendorf had started a few years earlier, now adding Scott on bass and Berninger on vocals. After a self-titled debut close to Silver Jews-style folk-rock (“The National,” 2001), the band started to hit its stride with the follow-up “Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers” (2003), a record of gaunt, defeated love ballads, reaching an even better form the following year with “Cherry Tree Ep,” which contains forgotten gems like “All Dolled-Up In Straps” and the heart-wrenching “About Today” (later reworked in 2011 for the soundtrack of the successful “Warrior”).

One of the songs from that EP is the romantic, drunken “All The Wine,” which would also appear on the tracklist of the following album. “Alligator,” the National's third album, was released by Beggars Banquet on April 12, 2005, saving and forever changing the quintet's career. Even so – and this is perhaps why it still stands today as the best entry in an otherwise essentially flawless discography – it carries that desperate, vaguely resigned energy of someone with nothing left to lose. “Alligator” is a worldly, dishevelled indie rock record, on which Matt sounds a bit like someone who shows up late and already drunk to the party, and at some point starts dancing on the table, embarrassing everyone. The contrast between his ostentatious alcoholism and the elegance of his outfit and baritone voice makes him one of the most magnetic frontmen in contemporary rock.

Set against a cosmopolitan, progressive and dark Brooklyn, the record alternates between moments where the blood alcohol level runs dangerously high and others of wonderful tenderness. Unforgettable is “Karen,” with its wobbling piano figure and absurd confessions (“it's a common fetish for a doting man/ to ballerina on the coffee table, cock in hand”), alongside the tender, ambiguous memories of “City Middle” (“I have weird memories of you/ wearing long red socks and red shoes/ pissing in a sink”); but fifteen years on, songs like “Baby We'll Be Fine,” “The Geese Of Beverly Road” (“Serve me the sky with a big slice of lemon”: gorgeous) and the arpeggiated “Daughters Of The SoHo Riots” (“Break my arms around the one I love/ and be forgiven by the time my lover comes/ break my arms around my love”) still send shivers down the spine, tracks that seem to speak of love in a post-war era, like an embrace under a rain of grenades. Under the same bleak, parched air breathed by some of the most important post-9/11 American records, from “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” to “I'm Wide Awake It's Morning” to “Sound Of Silver.”

Didn't anybody tell you how to gracefully disappear in a room?

(“Secret Meeting”)

That “Alligator” is a memorable record is clear right from the start, with the shimmering guitars of “Secret Meeting” unfurling like a knot gracefully undone. There's a perfect alchemy between the instruments, there's the insight of adding countermelodies to the pathos of the finale, there's a lyric that says everything by saying nothing at all (“I'm sorry I missed you/ I had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain”). All of this is thanks to inspiration, of course, but also to a often-underrated group of musicians, starting with the two guitarists, down to the rhythm section, with special mention for Bryan Devendorf's extraordinary drumming and his knack for indulging in “silent” virtuosity (“Friend Of Mine”).

Clearly, it's also a record with the right reference points – the baritone crooning reminiscent of Stuart Berman, the urban paranoia borrowed from new wave, the sense of melancholy of the Smiths, plus all the alternative epicness of Nineties stock. And when on “Val Jester” Berninger sings “All the most important people in New York are nineteen,” it reminds me of Modest Mouse singing “The universe is shaped exactly like the Earth,” with that classic trick of the best indie rock: stating something objectively false as though it were objectively true.

Among the other anthems on this album, one can't help but mention the overwhelming “Lit Up” and the raw-throated “Abel,” another of those songs – like “Mr. November” – where Matt decides it's fine to shred his own vocal cords. It's these small details, too, that make “Alligator” what it is: an eternal space of sharing, of mutual support between band and listeners, waiting for better times. The quality of the individual songs is immense, and in hindsight it's not hard to imagine the handful of people at those early shows multiplying a hundredfold within just two years.

One of the most fascinating testimonies of that period of uncertainty and hope can be found in a retrospective by Paul de Revere, written for Pitchfork ten years after the album's release. "A few months after the album came out, the band played a small venue in front of thirty people, including the venue staff and the opening act. Towards the end of the night, one of the two guitarists (Bryce or Aaron) sat down at the piano in the green room and started plunking out what would become 'Fake Empire', the song that would put the band on the map," de Revere recalls. It was precisely that period of intimate, restless creativity that fuelled the band's rise. Two years later came "Boxer", and everything changed: the arenas, the concerts for Obama, the fame. What Matt Berninger and co. are known for today is undoubtedly found on that album, but what they are, at their best, has its roots in the previous record, quite simply one of the finest indie rock albums ever written. Yesterday, today and tomorrow, "Alligator" is forever.

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03/01/2021