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It's all drama with Interpol. The tailored suits, the scowls, the
restless chord patterns and Paul Banks' clipped, mannered croon. They
project an image at once impeccably groomed and emotionally fragile.
Theirs is the kind of immaculate, cold façade that hides hundreds of
tiny cracks, massive vulnerability shielding its eyes from the
flashbulbs even as the cool exterior luxuriates in their light.
Emerging from a dense blue haze of dry ice into deafening
acknowledgement, Interpol have no way of failing tonight with the
capacity crowd. Even so, it's startling to witness the intensity that
these four young men (plus keyboard player) can generate between
them.
They open with Success, the first track on their recent self-titled
fourth album, a naggingly addictive upward spiral of tense chords
which never settle into anything resembling a comfortable
resolution. "I'm a good guy," sings Banks, in the tone of someone who
knows he's really anything but. "I have succeeded/ I won't compete for
long." Even when he wins, Banks sounds like he wishes he'd lost, as
Dan Kessler's guitar chops and chimes in what could be read as
U2-like fashion, but with far more of an edge than even The
Edge himself could muster these days. They reach back to their second
album Antics for the second song, the sweepingly romantic and
superficially upbeat C'Mere. About as uncomplicatedly happy as this
band gets, it's still self-aware enough to throw an extra chord-change
or two into the mix just to keep the crowd on their toes. It truly
seems that if Interpol were a facial expression, it would be a
quizzical frown (maybe over a half-smile), so regularly does their
music pull tiny, subtle tricks on the listener like that.
Leif Erikson plunges the Academy back into the half-light:
literally as the dry ice goes mental and the huge row of strip lights
behind them begin to pulse with an evil will, like a Dan Flavin light
sculpture come to life, shifting into proper disco-strobe action for a
raging, animalistic Slow Hands. And so begins an early-set surge of
excitement as every song builds majestically on the last, with greater
and greater emotional weight. The sleazy drug confessional Rest My
Chemistry sounds violently oppressive tonight, each drumbeat landing
like a punch. Say Hello To The Angels sounds more like a forgotten
Smiths B-side than ever, Kessler's guitar pealing like Johnny
Marr's at high speed, Banks cramming as much artful nonsense into each
verse as he can. Mammoth is a juggernaut of sound with faulty brakes
on black ice, rising to an almost comically intense finale.
Barricades animates some kids in the front row who stab their
fingers emphatically at the stage on every lyric while the gorgeous,
Christmassy NYC bathes the venue in warmth and hugs for a bit. Not
for long though; the melody of Lights is very much a furrowed brow,
another of the band's recent exercises in unrelenting tension that
builds to a climax which is at once breathtaking and utterly
emotionally blank, which is quite an achievement. A sudden attack of
crowd surfing during old favourite Obstacle 1 gives way to a
reflective, melancholy stretch with the tumbling John Barry
chords of Safe Without showcases Banks' voice ringing like a bell.
They finish the main set with a surging, triumphal Not Even Jail
and after a knowingly short interval (encores are such a weird,
'I-believe-in-Santa' ritual sometimes) Banks and Kessler re-emerge for
the slow-building, suspended-in-mid-air serenade of The
Lighthouse. As the rest of the band sneak back on stage to play the
song's almost religious-sounding finale it becomes apparent that this
could be the highlight of the gig... if they didn't then obliterate it
with a sucker-punch triptych of Evil (all fierce red lights and
attitude), Stella Was A Diver And She Was Always Down (which seems
to last for several blissful, over-wrought weeks), and the coup de
grace: early single PDA roaring out of the gate leaving ash in its
wake, seemingly causing the crowd to spasm in unison.
It isn't quite perfection: Summer Well from the new record is a
bit of a middling placeholder and, as accomplished as their hirsute,
compact new bassist is, the lanky, lunging New Romantic frame of
Carlos Dengler is definitely missed. No matter. Interpol have quietly
solidified their place in the current pantheon through low-key
persistence and resistance to the vagaries of style. Banks also seems
to be leaving behind the cool-sounding nonsense of his youth and his
lyrics have finally started to resemble narratives, albeit oblique,
opaque ones. As they depart the stage one last time, an image comes to
mind of them boarding a yacht and disappearing into an F Scott
Fitzgerald novel, where their patented brand of stiff-upper-lip
intensity would appear to be right at home.
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