The National – Alligator

You grow up in the country, meet again in New York and make music together to spend the evenings. With your own money you record a first record, with luck the second one ("Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers") is discovered by multipliers on the other side of the ocean. It also happened that The National toured Europe for almost a whole year. And now with "Alligator" can deliver a little masterpiece.

Little has changed, but much has been perfected. The colleagues at the studio controls also gave Interpol and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs the finishing touches. Matt Berninger still writes and sings about strange, sad or funny events, about record collections, missing persons and medium-sized American hearts. His songs are less countryesque than Wilco, less larmoyant than the Tindersticks and not quite as morbid as the Cave's Murderballads. Berninger's heroes seem to have sprung from a Tennesee Williams play, are ruthless, peculiar and possessed seducers, but one may forgive them.