i leant on the wall and the wall leant away

if you can stomach the new york times' rock criticism and have time for a 5,000 words, this article on the national goes hard. it sums up what makes them so relatable:

On “Alligator,” the tension and turmoil of feeling past your peak when your youth’s still unfulfilled collect into biting little everyday paranoias and aggressions lurking just below the surface. Matt and his wife, Carin, not yet married then, were breaking up and getting back together frequently, “trying to resist the person you might end up with,” as Carin puts it. Fragments of their life were feathered into lyrics. One night, Carin accused Matt of being in search of an “out–of-this-world person who’s a pure fantasy,” by telling him he was going through life “looking for astronauts,” which soon became the title of a song.

sounds familiar.