1) All The Rage Back Home; 2) My Desire; 3) Anywhere; 4) Same Town, New Story; 5) My Blue Supreme; 6) Everything Is Wrong; 7) Breaker 1; 8) Ancient Ways; 9) Tidal Wave; 10) Twice As Hard; 11) Malfeasance*.
General verdict: An attempt to get back to where it all began... but WHY?
Seriously? Anagrams?
The only thing I can say is that it would have at least made a little bit of
sense if they decided to go with a bit of Spanish influence here — good or bad,
it would provide some cohesiveness between the title and the music; as it is,
it just looks like a pretentious move in the face of unsurmountable musical
odds. Which do get worse as Carlos Dengler, possibly the bandʼs second best musician
after the drummer, leaves Interpol to pursue careers in DJing, acting, film
scoring, and whatever else captures his fancy, as long as it does not involve
dragging on the agonizing career of a band that had very few reasons to exist even
in its prime.
Perhaps in order to compensate for Carlosʼ
departure and prove that the fire has not gone out at all, Banks, Kessler, and Fogarino
go for a noticeably more rocking and energetic approach here than on the
indie-meets-adult-contemporary self-titled album — but it does not help one
bit. When each and every single one of your songs sets the exact same mood;
when on each and every single one of your songs you use the same guitar tones,
the same reverb, the same plaintive vocal tones, the same mediocre riffs,
compressed and drowned in sonic slush — when you do all that, you know that you
are working almost exclusively for your oldest fan base, the converted crowd
from the days of Turn On The Bright Lights.
I have a hard time imagining anybody getting
acquainted with Interpol through this album and being even vaguely impressed
with it.
Just one example will suffice. ʽSame Town, New Storyʼ
could theoretically be a good song. It opens with an attention-grabbing «swirling»
post-punk riff which then finds itself trapped inside a disco arrangement (watch
that bass) as the song narrates some thickly veiled Springsteen-ian story about
a struggling couple. The whole thing certainly got potential — but it sounds awful. The riff is processed and muffled
like corned beef, the bass is flattened against the backing synthesizers, the
vocals are cavernous, and the integration of the riff with the disco background
and the vocals is clumsy and disorienting. Had the same thing been recorded by,
say, Television around 1977, it might have been a completely different story;
but this sound is just draggy — and this is, melodically, a definite highlight
of the album.
Because elsewhere, it is just one mediocre
pounding fast-to-midtempo pop-rocker after another, using the same minimalistic
riffage that we have already heard plenty of times from the band and generating
the same coolly depressed atmosphere that we already know so well. For all my
anger at Turn On The Bright Lights, I
could at least agree that it tried to
revive some old values in a new setting — El
Pintor is an attempt at a revival of a revival, showing a band that has not
a single fresh thing to say. Goddammit, man, for all the stereotypical ideas
about «mope-rock» outfits as obnoxious self-repeaters, Joy Division went a much
longer distance from their first album to their second than Interpol did in
their entire career.
Hi George, I didn't quite get it what do you mean saying about anagrams? Interpol reinventing themselves?
ReplyDelete"El Pintor (Spanish for "the painter"; also an anagram of "Interpol")"
DeleteAh! He could probably just go with In Terpol, people would understand Spanish better that way.
DeleteI don't know, except for perhaps the debut their albums all tend to blur together for me and are hard to tell apart. If you gave me a blind test with a compilation I'd be at a loss as to which album most of the tracks came from. It's kind of good for background music though. When I'm in the mood for some 2000s post-punk revivalist arena rock I much prefer British Sea Power. At least they have a sense of humor and indulge in quirky project like writing post-rockish scores for forgotten silent documentaries.
ReplyDeleteThe Joy Division comparisons have never and continue not to make a whole lot of sense to me beyond certain elements on the debut album because their influences are clearly more in the vein of shoegaze, 80s/90s alt rock, and dance music. But I also tend to think the "myth" of JD has preserved that band's critical legacy in amber in a way that is misleading if not sometimes outright dishonest. I don't follow comment about Television; your critique there seems to be about the mix (which is poor across the board) rather than the songwriting?
ReplyDeleteWould have been interested to hear Carlos D's contributions on bass for this record, but the man is a clown.