One such critical favorite was Interpol of New York City. The dour and dapper quartet were never as well known as fellow Manhattanites the Strokes, but their dark and danceable debut Turn On The Bright Lights topped a lot of year-end polls, not to mention placed the band high on a lot of best-of-the-decade retrospectives.
Although it was critically lauded, Bright Lights heaped the band in with a lot of other acts featuring brooding dudes who approached rock with stark guitar lines and late '70s inspired rhythms. It also set a high bar by which the band is incessantly measured. Many bands from that time who worked in the same oeuvre -- from the Strokes to The Killers -- fizzled out by the end of the aughts as freaky folkers from Brooklyn had left post punk in the dust.
Interpol plugged forward since Bright Lights, though, seemingly oblivious to the trends developing around them. And while other bands seemed to wilt under their own popularity or were snuffed out by failed experiments, Interpol approached each new record on its own terms and at a steady pace that managed to expand the sound without destroying it entirely. By 2007's Our Love to Admire, the band's under-appreciated third LP, Interpol had developed an approach that relied much less on that post-punk heavy rhythm attack and more on atmosphere. Songs become more spacious, moody and grand. The bigger sound came at a cost: its new label, Columbia, was underwhelmed by lousy sales and many fans were left wondering what had happened to the Bright Lights swagger they had loved so much.
Interpol's much-anticipated, self-titled fourth album finds the band back with its original label, Matador, and seemingly on the verge of becoming a pretty big deal -- before the tour was postponed, Interpol was set to open up for U2 all over the world. The time would have been right for a so-called "return to form" album, a reprise of Bright Lights. Instead, Interpol has continued to work on honing its aesthetic, and much of it here is successful -- despite the bad reviews you've likely read elsewhere. The album is a sure step forward and sounds particularly great, in part, no doubt, to the mixing of Alan Moulder, who has worked on bands from Jesus and Mary Chain and Depeche Mode to the Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
There are songs here that are not immediately accessible, but there's plenty that should be, particularly to those used to the band's sound by now. There are songs here that should appeal to Interpol fans right away. "Success" opens the album with trademark Interpol guitar -- a single reverberating guitar riff in front of a building rhythm attack before a big chorus payoff. Early singles "Lights" and "Barricade," and the slow cruise of "Safe Without" all have that trademark Interpol sound. They are immediately familiar and none would have been out of place on the band's second album, Antics. The second track, "Memory Serves," a mid tempo love song (by Interpol standards), may be the album's best. It definitely has the album's best chorus (lyrics have never been singer Paul Banks' specialty).
More interesting, though, are the experiments that really work. The bouncy, piano-led third track "Summer Well" is the first "new" Interpol song here. It's driven by a loping bass line and hushed, syncopated drums before plunging into an Interpol trademark staccato guitar chorus. Another neat -- again piano led -- song is track 8, "Try it On." It begins with a short, repeating piano run backed by a techno-sounding break-beat with hardly a guitar to be heard until more than a minute in. Both songs are unpretentious cracks at new sonic territory for the band and both are immediately accessible.
Tougher to listen to, perhaps are the two closing tracks that follow "Try it On." Here the band gets a bit caught in its own ambitions, skirting on the line of pretension. In both instances, the big idea falls short. Track 9, "All of the Ways" cleverly emerges in a guitar drone from the bubbly keyboard outro of "Try it On," but then spends its entirety on a rhythmless build -- save for the faint click of drumsticks about three minutes in that trick you into thinking a big change is about to come, though it never does. It's a song that is interesting in context, but not much more.
The closer, "The Undoing" is a slightly less dramatic than "All of the Ways," but only slightly so. This song works itself into a pretty good head of rhythm-section steam, but not nearly as satisfying as the other songs preceding it. It closes in a chorus of key and organ chords that make it sound melodramatic. One wonders if the song is only half completed... the song leaves the entire song cycle feeling unfinished. In fact, the only issue I have with Our Love to Admire is the limp closer "Lighthouse, which also announces "the end" in melodramtic bells and crashing key chords. It's as if the band thinks it needs to close with some sort of big, Wagnerian statement. I would have been happy with a song as sharp as sharp as the first eight.
So, the fans looking for another Bright Lights, this will definitely disappoint. But for the rest of us looking for something a little different, Interpol is a perfectly good record. Sure, Interpol could probably churn out dancy numbers like "PDA" and "Slow Hands" all day. I don't think it would have taken them much effort to record Bright Lights part II. But what would the point have been? The sound would likely make them seem like an unevolved throwback. Interpol certainly suffers from some missteps and a clutter of an ending but the experimentation and expansion of the band's sound is worth it in the end. Interpol is a record that already makes me eager to hear what these guys will try next.
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