Don’t Miss Out The National – Alligator

repressed on vinyl with download. on the national third album and firstfor beggars banquet matt berninger’s potent baritone still intones aboutmatters fraught and funny and sad; about record collections, missingpersons and medium-sized american hearts. but the records not simplygothic or miserablist – more like the plays of tennessee williams, itsfull of peculiar intimacies and awkward grace. alligator’s heroes arereckless and possessed seducers, but they are apologetic ones. in thenational’s imaginings, in songs alternately lush and spare, there issomething twilit and dreamy worked out in the basement of our brains. ithas the bravado of leonard cohen and a spare elegance unheard since thetriffids.