I know I’ve been recording a pretty crappy posting frequency but it gets busy at this time of year and I seem to keep collecting a bunch of unfinished thoughts.
Well, I’ve been listening to and enjoying The National’s Alligator a bunch recently. But no matter how much I listen to it, I think that perhaps the one shortcoming of the album is the flow. I feel like there are many points where songs come out of nowhere, and the transitions are really lacking. On their own, the songs are fantastic, but I just don’t think the presentation is giving them their fair shake. The sequence bothers me especially with “Karen” placed so early on the album, and then the transition from “Lit Up” to “Looking for Astronauts.” I suspect that the underlying structure that orders the songs is the way in which the lyrics fit within an overall theme of a broken relationship between lead singer Matt Barrick and an ex-girlfriend (Karen?).
So I tried reordering the album more based on tempo and flow (at least I didn’t just reverse the order, right?). It’s subtle, but it sounds better to me (black session links with thanks to muzzle of bees):
01 Lit Up (03)
02 Secret Meeting (01)
03 Daughters of the Soho Riots (05)
04 Mr November (13)
05 Looking for Astronauts (04)
06 Karen (02)
07 Baby We’ll Be Fine (06)
08 All the Wine (09)
09 Val Jester (08)
10 Friend of Mine (07)
11 City Middle (12)
12 Abel (10)
13 Geese (11)
