Album Review: Interpol - Our Love to Admire

Rating: 6

Oh shit... it's happening again...

A lot of my relatives on my mother's side are fundamentalist/evangelical Christians. So I was exposed to a lot of propoganda as a child concerning the many ways in which my soul was in threat of eternal damnation. One of my most vivid memories concerns a comic book that explained how rock music was the work of Satan. According to this comic, recording studios were the locations of grand Sabbats, where the bands and producers would sell their souls in exchange for some magical quality that would make their music irresistible to listeners.

This is not going to be a response to any part of that ridiculous assertion... but if I had to venture a guess to a band about whom it could be true, Interpol would be my first and final answer. Honestly, I'm at a loss based on any criterion I would apply to any other band why Interpol's first two albums feature so prominently in my headspace, my playlists, my car stereo when I'm blowing off the steam of another long day in the office. The guitar work is consistently and laughably awful - I challenge you to name an Interpol song where Daniel Kessler doesn't play the same note in quarters for multiple measures. Considering that Interpol are widely held up as a "great guitar band," this failing alone should have kept them far from my collection. Add to this Paul Banks' inscrutable and/or painfully trite lyrics (which have been dissected plenty of other places - google "Interpol awful lyrics" or any such phrase), and you can probably see why I begin to suspect diabolic intervention.

Because the fact is I unqualifiably love Antics, and the amazing songs on Turn on the Bright Lights outweigh and overpower the obvious dregs. There are two secret weapons at work here: first, Carlos Dengler is a mind-blowing bassist. His work on the first two albums is consistently fluid, counterintuitive, ocasionally funky, nearly always distinctive. Second (and this is the clincher - what keeps Interpol songs always buzzing around somewhere in the back of my head), there's that voice. Not to mention what Banks does with it. The first time I heard "Obstacle 1" I thought surely somebody was joking. But within two listens, I realized that the song's overwrought vocals had tapped into some deep place in my brain and were never coming out. I'd find myself wailing "But she can READ, she can READ, she can READ, she's BA-A-AAD!" with an intensity that would have led a listener (not that I ever did this in earshot of anyone, mind you) to think I was revealing my life's darkest secrets under extreme duress. Never mind what the fuck any of it MEANS (or even whether it does) - Banks' vocals are Interpol's Satanic deal with me. They've replaced Sleater-Kinney as the band I turn to when I just gotta sing along.

So... long exposition... where's Matthew going with all this? If I had written this review a couple weeks ago when I first started listening to Our Love to Admire, that rating would have been a 5. Maybe even a 4. Let's not kid ourselves - this album has nothing new to offer the world that Interpol haven't done better previously. First single "The Heinrich Maneuver" is the sort of casually great rocker that they perfected on Antics. It won't save your life, but you'll never hit the Next button when it comes on. Album opener "Pioneer to the Falls" is the latest Moody/Atmospheric First Song, and I'll grant I like it more than "Next Exit" (clearly the low-point on Antics). I'll further grant them that "Mammoth" and "All Fired Up" strut and swagger respectively - these are new moods for the band and they're standout tracks even within the larger catalog. But the rest of the album? The plodding verses on "No I in Threesome" (and don't even get me started on that title or the lyrics that support it)... the way "The Scale" tries to be menacing and "Rest My Chemistry" tries to be stately yet they're both just torpid... too much of Our Love to Admire lacks the dynamics of Bright Lights or the tuneful consistency of Antics. Perhaps most unforgiveable is the complete enervation of Carlos' basslines. Whereas he used to bubble and seethe just below the surface, on most of this one he merely keeps the beat. No doubt he'd rather have been composing film scores or something.

Ah but... now we come to that sentence I used to open this review. Because yes - goddamn it - that voice has once again planted some seeds in my barely-consciousness that refuse to be shaken free. I stand by what I just wrote about "No I in Threesome" - it has the pace of a snail, and no points for replacing the usual guitar monotonal quarter notes with (hold yourself down) piano monotonal quarter notes. But fuck if I haven't been walking around plaintively singing "Babe it's time we gave something new a try" for the past month. This infuriates me, but I'm a mere mortal and Paul Banks is gonna burn in hell. The choruses of "Pace is the Trick" (admittedly a decent song in its own right) and "The Scale" have both spent days as the soundtrack to my unfocused waking moments, say when I'm walking down the street or to the bathroom. My friend Russ dubs "Mammoth"'s chorus "another Banks lyrical stinker"... but I'm all for an Interpol song that pierces through the band's normal studied distance and drops a couple impassioned F-bombs.

In short.... oh shit, it's happened again. I want to hate these songs, I want to hate this album, I want to be pissed off at the band (especially Carlos) for giving us something so mediocre and then insisting (as Banks did in an interview with Pitchfork published yesterday) that it's their best. I feel all of that, but... "Babe, it's time we gave something new a try!" sigh...

I just hope the fires are EXTRA hot when Paul Banks pays his dues.