I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we’ve had a few scuffles lately. People have been taking to the streets to… take stuff, apparently. And burn stuff. And occasionally hurt people. It’s pretty depressing but fairly easily explained. If you’re just one person amongst a huge crowd, you’re practically anonymous; when you lose your individual identity you become a little less human. Urban settings are the worst for this since, in, for instance, a rural village, everyone knows everyone, but in a city, you are at once everyone and no one. If this uncomfortable feeling had a sound it would sound like Interpol.

If I had a penny for every time I’ve heard someone say that Interpol ripped off Joy Division, I’d probably have enough to buy something to hit them with. Yes, there are hints of the moody Manchester post-punk legends in Interpol’s sound, but saying that Interpol are Joy Division rip-offs is a bit like saying that a Spanish omelette is a rip off of a chicken. They are their own band, a separate entity and more than worthy of your attention.

Turn On The Bright Lights

After releasing a handful of head-turning EPs, the band’s debut LP Turn On The Bright Lights lived up to its high expectations and then some. It stands as a strange fleeting glimpse of dead and self-destructive love-lives, set against the neon lights and imposing skyscrapers of the city that never sleeps. Here Paul Banks’s lyrics make you feel like you’re eavesdropping on one half of a significant conversation: various lovers’ spats are mixed with blurred dialogue that sounds confusing and possibly threatening out of context (“You’re so cute when you’re sedated, I miss you”).

The music itself is about as refreshing and alluring as post-punk gets. The guitars alternately ring and growl. The opener (which was, strangely enough, used as the closing music for a season finale of ‘Friends’) binds you from the start as it grows out of a single riff into a panorama. The straight-up anxious rock songs like ‘Obstacle 1′, ‘Roland’ and ‘PDA’ are as thrilling as misery gets while the melancholy brooders range from poignant to just-plain heartbreaking.

Take ‘NYC’ which both laments the impersonal nature of city life (“I had seven faces, Thought I knew which one to wear”) and embraces the fact that it’s his home (“Somehow I’m not impressed, but New York cares”). The closer ‘Leif Erikson’ leaves the album dangling at its highest point; a visceral, beautiful framing of two lovers on the verge of implosion with a climax that’s provoked tears in many a listener before cutting off abruptly, unfinished, there could hardly be a better way of ending one of the most extraordinary rock albums of recent times.

[5.0/5.0]: Classic

Antics

After breathing new life into a genre that was seemingly comatose, Interpol brightened their sound for their second LP. Antics might just be their most accessible record; the regular themes of barely-contained frustration and palpable disappointment are still here, but they’re in a sharper focus. The lyrics are less ambiguous, the guitars have their reverberant tones reigned back and it’s probably the most “pop” that they’ll ever get. The lights are off, the sun is out, but it’s still as miserable as ever.

Even though it’s a slip from the first album, it’s a fairly small slip; it’s a really great record. There’s really not a song on it that sinks below “very good”, but as usual there are a few highlights that rise above the rest. My personal favourite is ‘Narc’ which focuses on a boyfriend unsuccessfully trying to tempt his lover away from terminal drug abuse. ‘Narc’ has all the tension of a nail-biting phone conversation between the couple as well as a sense of powerlessness and despair that is only too palpable.

‘C’Mere’ ranks as probably their most straightforward lovelorn lyric which nonetheless works really well and gets right to the point alongside stridently unhappy guitar lines. If the LP has a happy moment, it’s the urgent anthem ‘Slow Hands’ which was even used on an Armani advert with Josh Hartnett. ‘Antics’ showed that Interpol could progress well without alienating their audience which is practically the formula for a sure-fire successful follow up. Cracking stuff.

[4.0/5.0]: Highly recommended.

Our Love To Admire

Before you even listen to Interpol’s third, you notice a difference. Gone are the stark, three-colour covers that graced ‘Bright Lights’ and ‘Antics’; instead we’re greeted with a photo of some lions and an antelope represented in taxidermy. If that’s a departure though you should hear the music. It’s still their brand of post punk, but while ‘Antics’ was a fairly stripped-down affair, ‘Our Love To Admire’ has embellishments up to its neck. It sounds as if they’ve been listening to Spaghetti Western film scores. The first track alone features pianos, an electric mandolin and some brassy keyboards and string arrangements. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they slip into this new subtly cinematic sound very well.

So, in a nutshell, the new sound does not let them down in the slightest; some of the songs, however, do. For example, ‘Pace Is The Trick’ sounds a little like an inferior Xerox copy of the opener ‘Pioneer To The Falls’. These bumps in the road however don’t bring the record down too much. Our Love To Admire is a flawed, but a bold and interesting follow-up with some really excellent songs. The gigglesomely titled ‘No I In Threesome’ is the album’s sharpest character study; it’s a husband’s strangely mournful plea for an open relationship set against pounding piano chords and bassy murmurs. The aptly titled ‘All Fired Up’ is the album’s best rocker alongside the single ‘Mammoth’ which achieves the rare feat of making an addictive and thrilling rock song with what is effectively a one-note riff. ‘Rest My Chemistry’, a knackered-out ode to serial-shaggery, is another highlight with Banks’s lyrics displaying their usual flare for providing only half a vital picture. Aside from a few shaky steps, ‘Our Love To Admire’ is a worthy addition to a fine back catalogue.

[3.5/5.0]: Very good.

Interpol

Some bands have come up with some crazy album titles in their time, but nothing gets people talking like when they name their record after themselves. A self-titled record could mean a variety of things: it could mean they want to get back to basics; it could mean they intend this to be their definitive statement, or it could mean nothing at all. Interpol’s self-titled fourth certainly sounds far more stripped-down. Unfortunately, it’s so stripped down the songs barely have any distinction.

Rather than the bright cities that we’ve come to love from the band, they’ve instead something distinctly murky. This is less New York and more Gotham City; it’s a strange monochrome comic book kind of sound. I didn’t like it the first time I heard it, but I held out for it, since some of my favourite records have been hard-earned pleasures. Interpol is very much mood dependant album. If you’re not feeling it then you won’t enjoy it, but some time when you listen to the brooding ‘Lights’, possibly after the fourth or fifth play, it’ll hit you. While it’s far less obvious than Our Love To Admire, it’s just as experimental and expansive. Greg Drudy’s drum kit has grown outwards, encompassing more hissing hi-hats than rolling toms. There’s more space between the instruments; there’s very few sound barrages. It might just be that, if this was their first album, Interpol would have been much better received. There’s something that really intrigues me about it. I feel I can’t get to the bottom of it and, depending on what mood you’re in, that can be either thoroughly absorbing or very dull indeed.

There’s plenty of joy to be found in here, but you have to look harder. The opener ‘Success’ has one of the band’s best sing-along funereal choruses while the slow build-up of ‘Lights’ ranks as one of the band’s crowning achievements. Nonetheless, Interpol is all-to-often a frustratingly monotonous listen which doesn’t quite click into place when it should. I think it’s safe to have high hopes for their fifth record though.

[2.5/5.0]: Not quite.

Essential album: Turn On The Bright Lights

Essential tracks: ‘Obstacle 1′, ‘Say Hello To The Angels’, ‘Leif Erikson’, ‘Narc’, ‘Slow Hands’, ‘Public Pervert’, ‘No I In Threesome’, ‘The Heinrich Manoeuvre’, ‘Rest My Chemistry‘, ‘Success’, ‘Lights’, ‘Barricade’.