I read recently of a woman who when first introduced to Interpol, was distinctly unimpressed with their music and perplexed with the notion that they were about to become a band who would demolish the musical landscapes with their gargantuan sounds of eerie isolation mixed with a quite splendid infusion of British-soaked indie influence, with a whippet of home-grown New York sexual fervour added for good measure. Ah yes, it really was a long-streamed concoction best served nosily. And so the story continues - when the second plane hit tower two, sharking in over the New York skyline, and defining the most momentous occasion in our lifetime's history, this woman, initially not at all bowled over by the music, now saw it as a searingly haunting soundtrack to the devastation of the attack. Profound and relevant, Interpol supplied a music quite aptly adjustable to the times.It was a stunning display of production, churning something new out of something old.
Critics oft suggest that their sound suffers from an extreme case of invariability, and, admittedly, it would be hard to venture on a counter-argument. Again, this album, like the last, offers no shocks. We're not taken down any road of musical peculiarity, we're not ushered into any notion of experimentalism. It's a constant. It's reverberated. It's Interpol. It still impresses. However, whilst it may not pack too many surprises, it is a continuation- of consistency and sound.
With 2002's debut "Turn On The Bright Lights," and it's much celebrated predecessor " Antics" shoehorning the uber-suave four-piece into the trappings of the mainstream, "Our Love To Admire" pulls the same bleak-pop punches. And bleak it is! We're coldly lulled into the albums opener with a harrowing guitar line. Slow, ominous and ostensibly harrowing, Banks achingly yearns "Show me the dirt pile and I will pray that the soul can take three stowaways". A mere 30 seconds in and we're already dimming the lights, closing the curtains and turning up the sound. Just to throw us off course for a bit, we're flung a line of satire with the proceeding track, the brilliant "No I In Threesome". Born out of that are "Scale", a jagged swoon, and "Heinrich Maneuver", the beat-stomping, full-blitzed first single. Suddenly, the curtains have delicately edged open and cascaded a glimmer of light upon the initial gloom. We're up off the floor and we're tapping our foot.
"Pace Is The Track," a brooding elegy of love, is, quite possibly, the albums standout track. Reminiscent of the albums opener, "Pioneer Of The Falls", in its laboring slow trudge towards electrified spurges of protruding echo outbursts and angst, this is Interpol at their finest- "you don't hold a candle," Banks laments. On this showing, it would be quite difficult to digress. We're fed delicious distorted-ridden helpings of cutting-edge rock next with "All Fired Up" and "Rest My Chemistry", before sauntering off to slam open the curtains and rip them off the wall for a spasmodic dance around the room with "Who Do You Think?". They have us by the neck now, and finish us off on the floor with a desperation-induced wrecking ball to the head, and the soft grumblings of "Lighthouse," a seeping stutter of flailing musical life. And then we're asleep. Or dead. Who knows?
And so, just like that plane sharking ominously in over the skyline of the landscape, determining the most defining moment in each of our own histories, Interpol with their overwhelming, yet distinctly workable ominousness, and already widely-celebrated musical soundscapes, landed in a world of musical of ghastly overbearing mediocrities, blitzed them with something new, something welcomed, and defined a musical generation all of their own doing. Shocking? Perhaps not, but reliable in excellence? Most certainly.Anyways, Toodle-pips, I'm off to buy some curtains.
0 comments:
Post a Comment