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Recent Articles
Recent Articles by Eryc Eyl
Light and the Machines
Self-released
The band's first full-length album charts new territory.
Cheer on your favorites at the US Air Guitar Championship regional competition.
Saturday, June 7, hi-dive, 720-570-4500.
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National Features >
Broward-Palm Beach New Times
For Florida's sole remaining sex surrogate, love is a many splintered thing.
By Michael J. Mooney
City Pages
It's not just giant companies cashing in on America's defense industry.
By Jeff Severns Guntzel
The Pitch
How a throwaway idea at the Barkley ad agency became the "Sonic Guys."
By Justin Kendall
Houston Press
A diner's guide to Texas's oldest Mexican restaurants.
By Robb Walsh
The National
Monday, September 26, hi-dive, 720-570-4500.
Published on September 22, 2005
For a certain kind of person, there's nothing happier than really sad music. That's where the National comes in. On the quintet's latest critically lauded album, Alligator, Matt Berninger comes on like Bill Callahan fronting American Music Club, while brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner and Scott and Bryan Devendorf provide a cinematic and anthemic backdrop that's simultaneously grandiose and vulnerable. Even as Berninger fixates on self-loathing mantras like "I'm so sorry for everything" and "I used to be carried in the arms of cheerleaders," his bandmates swirl around him like the guys who probably beat him up in the locker room. In the end, Alligator's tension-filled juju of arrogance and desperation is the spiritual cousin of the Afghan Whigs' Gentlemen, with an extra dose of misanthropy thrown in for good measure.