Landing Among The Stars–Some thoughts on Interpol
Interpol is one of my favorite bands, but I don’t like most of their music. I realize it’s weird to say they’re one of my favorites when clearly I don’t like most of the shit they’ve come out with in the last 12 years.
And that’s fine; honestly, it is because Antics and Turn on the Bright Lights are two albums I can always go to when I’m writing. I’ve gone through several phases in my life in which I listen to those albums quite a bit but I’ve vacillated with their discography, curving along in waves along a baseline of Really Enjoying their Music, and finally settled on some type of an opinion on the matter.
Their early work I really love and connect with but after “Pioneer to the Falls” on Our Love to Admire things begin to get a bit spotty. On that album, two of the best songs start with the same note and that really sticks with me as uncreative. But! Each variation on that note is pretty good so maybe they should’ve started every song with that note? Because, looking directly at “Rest my Chemistry,” some of the songs downright suck.
They have a self-titled album from 2010 that I refuse to listen to. I read a review of the album and, toward the end, they talk about the album being frontloaded with its better songs. And that seems to be their formula: “Start with the best couple of songs then fill out the rest with mushy, indistinct sounds that don’t resonate in any way.”
Those two songs are usually pretty good but lately I’ve really been missing Carlos D, who was a wild-ass man fueled by starch and cocaine. He left the bad after their self-titled debacle and, instead of hiring an actual bassist who wasn’t already busy writing songs and playing guitar and singing and shit, Paul Banks just decided to do it himself. Very Thom Yorke of him. The problem, though, is that he’s… well, he’s not as good or original or pronounced which partly explains why the low-end on their latest albums was muddled but it doesn’t explain Our Love to Admire and the Interpol Interpol since those were produced with Mr. D’s talents and didn’t quite save them so…
It’s Paul Banks. It has to be. He’s released a mix tape called Everybody On My Dick Like They’re Supposed to Be which I think is supposed to be funny but is too convoluted to do it’s job. He also did an album with RZA, which is funny, but it shouldn’t be real.
I wonder where it all changed for him. Maybe he realized that the musical roadmap that Ian Curtis laid out only included two albums but not what comes after the first sound. Banks wrote music at 23 like an old man and now he’s an old man trying to recapture his youth. I couldn’t tell you what happened between 2004 and 2007 other than Bush’s re-election that caused him to seek some shadow-sound that rekindles the magic.
Their first two albums are good enough—iconic and classic, etc.—for me to forgive all the songs that fall flat. I recognize the fact that this makes me more of an apologist than a fan but I have a similar relationship with Silversun Pickups and Michael Bay.
Anyway.