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ALLIGATOR
(Beggars Banquet)
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Since twentysomething guys in emo bands have made careers out of acting like 11-year-old boys wary of catching cooties from girls, it seems only fair that we allow the thirtysomething indie-rockers in Brooklyn’s the National to skulk around like the sort of 60-year-old men who rarely leave the comfort of their well-worn bar stools. On Alligator, the National’s third full-length, frontman Matt Berninger sings in a weary, whiskey-cured croak about loving too hard and drinking too fast (or vice versa). "Fuck me and make me a drink," he commands one lucky lady in "Karen," summing up the group’s world view in a single pathetic predatory line. Berninger flexes his burnout shtick with real muscle — it’s not hard to hear him seducing these women into letting him disappoint them — but the appeal of sounding like a cut-rate Nick Cave when we’ve still got the real Nick Cave kicking around is limited. His mates do the buttoned-up indie thing with panache too: they get a good jangle going in "Looking for Astronauts," and opener "Secret Making" collapses the considerable distance between Tindersticks and Maroon 5. Still, this is elegantly wasted indie rock for true believers alone.
