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The riffs here are grander, the rhythms more limber, and the melodies more memorably moody than they've been in years.
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Banks leads his dark orchestra with aplomb on Interpol's most cohesive effort since Turn On The Bright Lights.
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I guess I'm the contrarian here, but I think Interpol deserve a significant amount of respect for taking the risk and mustering the sheer talent to create something so deeply submerged in melancholia you can't even see light.
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On Interpol, he and his bandmates manage the seemingly unmanageable task of finding new wrinkles in a tightly defined sound, one that's been theirs for nearly a decade.
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UncutIt is still familiar as an Interpol album, but it's certainly their most refined, elegant and frightening release. [Oct 2010, p.97]
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Q MagazineOminous fourth album from the masters of emotional turbulence. [Oct. 2010, p. 118]
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Though the record meanders into aimless moping in its final third, most of the 10 tracks are bold, heavy and among Interpol's best.
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True, a few of these compositions will probably end up soundtracking your next funeral party; but there are hints of a band yearning to crawl out from under the weight of its own history.
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While the band's celebrity rose in the wake of national tragedy, Interpol will remind you that it's time to be worried again.
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There's still the chance that this album will finally push them into the stratosphere – you wish Interpol were globally huge, you really do – although it's likely that their future won't be written until after Dengler's tour-replacements have helped broaden the band's palette more.
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Ultimately, Interpol isn't a statement of purpose as much as it is the end of an era for the band: With Dengler gone and back on their original label, they have the ability, and perhaps necessity, to go in any direction they choose.
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The size has always worked off the razor-sharp edges of the music, with Daniel Kessler's guitar leading the way. Interpol restores some of the shine, but the music still feels softer somehow, the cuts not as precise.
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They revive their pretensions for Interpol, a surprisingly solid comeback.
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Interpol is quite possibly the record that the more rabid end of the band's fanbase would have wanted Antics to be; a consistently flowing album, the whole of which is exceedingly better than the sum of its parts.
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Interpol mostly deliver on this album with what they do best, sprinkling some of their most creative moments across it. If this is a schism, it'll be intriguing to see what happens when the pieces eventually do settle.
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It could be that they're distracted – they've been together 10 years, and have numerous solo projects; is there more to for them to do with Interpol?
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Instead of ending tensely and dramatically they are the final whimper and sigh of an album named after a band that have lost their way and aren't sure which direction they should be heading.
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Alternative PressEven if Banks sticks to the "I've got two secrets but I only told you one" songwriting approach, hopefully a band shakeup will spark the soulfulness only occasionally heard in his contributions. [Oct 2010, p.118]
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Overall, Interpol seems cinematic, abstract and complex, but that adds up to something interesting rather than thrilling.
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MojoNew York's post-punkers are mooder than ever. [Oct. 2010, p. 90]
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It's a better album than their last, and diehard fans should be satisfied, but it's not going to get the rest of us very excited.
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Four long players into their career, you can't help but wonder if Interpol is just trying too hard to recapture some of that Turn On the Bright Lights magic. Either that, or the creative juices have been stifled by a rough turn of events.
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Even though I'm sad this record has left no lasting effect, I'm also happy that it might mean my life is heading somewhere positive.
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Interpol is undoubtedly a solid effort, but solid shouldn't be satisfying for a band that has proved to possess the talent of indie rock's elite class.
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Interpol may not be quite self-parody, but it's also not the sort of thing that's going to make them hip again anytime soon. Not that they would even care.
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If Interpol-an album that plainly documents a band stretching itself as far as it can unimpressively go-is what a large number of indie fans are going to settle for in this day and age, I can't help but shake my head and sigh in response.
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Intentional or not, some of that transition seeps into the music, giving songs room to ramble but nothing resembling a core.
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As meticulously as these sounds and instruments are recorded, as beautiful and haunting as they sometimes sound, they don't add up to more than one or two truly memorable songs.
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Interpol sounds both strangely distant and overly familiar, like a band struggling to remember who they are.
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Humbled by a silenced rhythm section and bafflingly reverberated guitars, the majority of Interpol is little more than background static. Maybe it's time for an intervention.
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The good news is that they're too skilled, experienced, and important to make a record that's just a mess, and for a while there's nothing so terrible about this one.
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I sense a more natural sense of songcraft here. Banks is still trying too hard, seemingly attempting to write songs he thinks people will like rather than songs that, whether simple or arpeggio-filled, he and his mates like.
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Where they used to sound like the crackling of a subway car rounding a bend or the seediest alleys of New York in the pre-dawn hours, here they sound like alt-rock renderings of what moody post-punk is supposed to sound like.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 90 out of 118
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Mixed: 19 out of 118
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Negative: 9 out of 118
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Sep 8, 2010
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Sep 9, 2010
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Sep 7, 2010