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Sep 9, 2014At a concise 10 tracks clocking in right at 40 minutes, there doesn’t seem to be much fat to trim on this record.
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Sep 8, 2014El Pintor is sleek, minimalist and brilliantly realised, and is the band’s best work since Antics.
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Aug 28, 2014Bold in intention and quiet in confidence, they've gone back to basics here and for the most part, the results are sublime.
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Sep 8, 2014Interpol has never wallowed in happiness, but yet the songs sound not only splendid but strangely triumphant.
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Sep 5, 2014Throughout, the refreshed use of light and dark is notable and works. There is contrast and there is colour.
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Sep 15, 2014El Pintor is not Antics or Turn on the Bright Lights, there are not as many immediate hooks and riffs that were present on these earlier releases; instead, the solid music on El Pintor unveils a nuanced mellowing that has taken over the last two releases from Interpol.
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MojoSep 12, 2014The sum total is unmistakably, and welcomingly, Interpol. [Oct 2014, p.89]
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Sep 9, 2014The band has delivered something even better here: an elegantly simple, aggressive album that understands and acknowledges its own past without nostalgia or bloat.
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Sep 8, 2014A return to form, it brims with fresh ideas, in everything from the looser production to the chordal detours that suggest the trio is ready to tweak its formula.
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Sep 8, 2014The new record finds singer Paul Banks and company reorganizing old reliable, post-Joy Division moves to deliver a fresher (more cheerful even?) atmospheric post-punk plate.
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Sep 8, 2014As differently paced as it is from the self-titled record, the album still feels like a new chapter rather than a whole new story.
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Sep 5, 2014It’s a characteristic success and a massive delight to the fans that their return as a three-piece yields something as excellent as El Pintor.
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Sep 4, 2014El Pintor finds Interpol returning to the sleek, monochrome post-punk that caused such an impact in the early 2000s.
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Alternative PressSep 3, 2014If the songs blend together a bit, that's called a style, and Interpol have always had that on their side. [Oct 2014, p.100]
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Sep 2, 2014Fifth time round, they're proving there's still plenty of value in their elegantly downtrodden aesthetic.
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Q MagazineAug 29, 2014On this fifth album, they are now both a more complex and straightforward version of the thoughtfully serrated quartet of 2002. [Oct 2014, p.106]
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Sep 15, 2014El Pintor is a well-produced album that proves Interpol are still a quality band, even without the extreme hype to back them.
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Sep 9, 2014Ultimately El Pintor feels a like a blast of icy fresh air after a sticky, sweltering summer’s day.
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Sep 4, 2014Interpol sound more connected to each other as players and songwriters, the result of making music in closer quarters and in the midst of unfamiliar footing.
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Sep 9, 2014El Pintor succeeds in besting 2010’s Interpol, whose reception was so deflating, it could have killed the band’s career. But against even 2007’s ho-hum Capitol Records excursion Our Love to Admire (let alone Turn On the Bright Lights or even Antics), El Pintor fails to do much more than tread water.
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Sep 18, 2014It's not wholly convincing, but underneath it all, the melodies sound nostalgic, and enlightened--a contrarian whiplash reaction only a band like Interpol could get away with.
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Sep 11, 2014Even if it doesn't have as much of the jagged need that sparked their best work, El Pintor is Interpol's most consistent album since Antics; fans who love the band for its pure sound will probably enjoy it more than those looking for stop-you-in-your-tracks moments.
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Sep 9, 2014The mix on El Pintor is a synth-heavy wall of reverb, which means Banks often sounds like he's singing from inside an ice chamber. Yet there's no missing the excellence of songs like "Anywhere," "My Desire" or the metallic "Ancient Ways," which sounds like an oblique answer to Rush's 2112.
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UncutAug 28, 2014On their fifth album, it's back go icy, slightly Gothic basics. [Oct 2014, p.73]
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Aug 28, 2014Sure, it’s not as good as ‘Turn On The Bright Lights’, but c’mon, it was never going to be. But as an exercise in getting back to where you once belonged, El Pintor is highly successful.
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Sep 9, 2014El Pintor is ultimately more pleasurable than it is painful, enough of a distraction to recall how important Interpol seemed at one time and how they can still pull off the illusion of importance after all these years.
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Sep 11, 2014The songs are excellent in their own right, but when they’re all lined up, Interpol start seeming like a one-trick pony.
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Sep 8, 2014El Pintor isn’t a rekindling of old fires, more so a chilled, mutual acceptance from a band that is letting things roll as smoothly as can be.
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Sep 8, 2014There are precious few real surprises, then, but that's not a problem.
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Sep 5, 2014While El Pintor is no Turn on the Bright Lights or Antics, the record finds Interpol climbing out of their mediocre rut, slowly but surely.
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Sep 5, 2014El Pintor is an Interpol album that does exactly what it says on the tin, with no alarms and no surprises.
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Sep 8, 2014With El Pintor, Interpol don’t sound as much like Interpol as they do a band that really wants to be Interpol; it’s a sad notion for anyone who once held this band’s music dear to their hearts, but taking into account what came before, it’s a miracle that Interpol still exist in this capacity at all.
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Sep 8, 2014As welcome as this debut was at the time, and as arguably relevant as its topoi of absence and alienation are to us all, there’s something very disquieting about a band that, four albums later, is obstinately continuing to mine its somber wellsprings.
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MagnetSep 18, 2014Sadly, "Everything Is Wrong" announces another second-half fade, the back side congealing into the same zombie histrionics that sank Interpol. [No. 113, p.57]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 128 out of 145
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Mixed: 12 out of 145
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Negative: 5 out of 145
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Sep 9, 2014
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Sep 9, 2014
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Sep 9, 2014