2005: The National - Alligator

This was the first album I heard, first I bought, by The National. who've been consistently one of my favourite bands ever since. To me, this is both their breakthrough album and their best album.

The National are one of those American bands for adults, you know, a big deal in a limited sphere, big enough to have Top 5 albums on both sides of the Atlantic, to headline mid-sized British festivals, not big enough for most people to have heard of them.

They're respected and liked, though some folk don't get what the big deal is. They have two sets of instrumentalist brothers who are all seriously expert and a tall, mumbly baritone lead singer who looks a bit like James Dreyfus from Gimme Gimme Gimme.

They don't sound like Wilco, not to me, but you could say they occupy the same space.

What makes the National great? What makes this album their best album?

I'm going to start somewhere I don't usually start - drumming. There are various knowledgeable folk who insist that a good drummer is key to a rock band, and I think I often ignore the truth in that. But I remember loving the drumming on 'Alligator' right from the start, the unusual rhythms which the vocal lines seemed to have a uncommon relationship with.

I loved the production on the record, you could hear the room it was recorded in. And it had lyrics that grabbed me. Lyrics you don't often hear. 'Karen'  is the second song on the album. It contains the line "It's a common fetish for a doting man to ballerina on the coffee table cock in hand". Well,  they got my attention, at the very least ...

Matt Berninger's vocals can sound debonair then desperate in the same sentence. He's deep, and murmurs but occasionally roars. The times I've seen them live (a few years ago now) he's been a man possessed on occasion. I imagine that gets harder to pull off when you're a successful man in his 40s.

What else? Rockin' rock anthems, of course. This album alone has three monstrous singalong rock anthems, in 'Lit Up', 'Abel' and 'Mr November'. These are songs to lose your mind to. If there's one thing the National aren't doing quite as well as they get older it's the derangement of the likes of 'Mr November' and 'Abel'. Their rock anthems have become more swooping and swooning.

The standout tracks sit really well in the album without dwarfing it. 'Secret Meeting' and 'Karen' would be standouts themselves on most albums, as would 'All the Wine'. Dissolute, eloquent despair, seedy living, beautifully rendered.

This album is a big step forward from its predecessor 'Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers', which is pretty standard American rock by comparison. Then, the next album 'Boxer' was even more of a commercial breakthrough, but a bit of a letdown for me. There have been two more, 'High Violet' and 2013's 'Trouble Will Find Me' which maintain standards of excellence. 'High Violet' is almost as good as 'Alligator'.

This is a band I like a lot. They probably had a brief period as my favourite band in the world. This is a compilation ...

Bloodbuzz Ohio
Secret Meeting
Lit Up
Conversation 16
Karen
Demons
Fake Empire
Afraid of Everyone
Abel
Mr November
Think You Can Wait
All the Wine
Slipping Husband
Mistaken for Strangers
Sea of Love
Pink Rabbits
England