Disco de Interpol: “Our Love to Admire”

"Our love to admire" is my introduction to the music of Interpol. Chiming melodic guitars and a brooding melancholic feel best describes the sound of this CD.

Interpol is a New York based quartet, but you'd be forgiven for thinking they were British. Think an edgier Coldplay or Snow Patrol, or even better, Joy Division.

Opening is the gentle lilting "Pioneer to the falls" with tumbling guitar sounds. More upbeat is the humorous "No 1 in the threesome" which still manages to sound gloomy.

"Scale" is a midtempo charmer, and lead off single "Heinrich maneuver" is a dance rocker a-la Franz Ferdinand. It's a kiss off to an ex.

"Mammoth" is another upbeat number with wonderful chiming guitars. Other upbeat numbers are "All fired up", and "Who do you think".

On the slower side of things, there's the lovely "Pace is the trick", the choppy "Rest my chemistry", the atmospheric "Wrecking ball" (with a name like that, I was expecting a rocker), and the dirge-like ambient epic "Lighthouse" (with percussion kicking in towards the final minute) which to me wouldn't be out of place on a Radiohead CD.

There's a whole lot to admire on this CD.

When I heard Antics I liked it but it was just a continuation of the first album. When Our Love to Admire came out I bought it thinking "What else can these guys do?" I have my answer. OLTA is Interpol but different. They kept the Interpol sound but did different things with it, some of it more upbeat and some not. I am a satisfied customer. It gets better with every listening.

It is my opinion that with Our Love to Admire Interpol has returned to the subtlety of Turn on the Bright Lights, and is a better album than Antics. I owned Bright Lights for almost a year after it came out before I really listened to the album and came to appreciate it. This was partly due to how different it was from all the other music on the radio, with its eccentric lyrics and subtle musicality. You really needed to pay attention while listening to value it (at least I did). It is now one of my all-time favorites.

When Antics was released, I listened to it the first time and felt like I "got it," meaning it was in a similar vein as Bright Lights but lacked the nuance that had rewarded close listening. It's a good album, but not great. The first time I heard the new album I wasn't blown away. But I did hear some of the seeds of what had made Bright Lights so remarkable, and I stuck with it. After listening to it for a few weeks, I have to say I think Our Love to Admire is a great album. I won't do a song by song thing, since that has already been done by other reviewers. Basically, the whole record is full of little surprises and clever touches that make listening to it sort of like trying to complete a puzzle or a crossword: you're listening to a song that you've heard a dozen times before when something pops out at you from the bass line or the percussion and totally changes the shape of the song. It is that kind of detail that makes Interpol such a great band, and it really comes through on this album.

This CD isn't exactly taking them into a new direction, but I believe it's pulling more of what was hidden the past couple of years. Mascara was a great song, but it wasn't on the first or second album. This new CD has more material that sounds like it would've been hidden material similar to mascara or the specialist. Most of the songs have that droning, dark voice of Paul Banks, with the exclusion of "The Heinrich Maneuver." It's a hard comparison among all three CD's, but they have not turned for the worst. If anything, the CD sounds like antics, but the songs are powerful enough to have you coming back if you listen to them thoroughly.

After a startling and instantly classic debut album (2002's Turn On the Bright Lights) and an upbeat but less ambitious sophomore set (2004's Antic), Interpol made the jump to the major labels, and then took its sweet time to come up with new material. Finally here comes the much anticipated new album.

The music on "Our Love to Admire" (11 tracks; 47 min.) generally seems to fall within two categories: on the one hand there is the continuation of more upbeat songs, with the prime example being the first single "The Heinrich Maneuver" ("Slow Hands" Part 2, but even catchier), but also on songs like "No I in Threesome" and in a strange way also on "All Fired Up" (with the main guitar riff seemingly lifted straight from Radiohead's "I Might Be Wrong"!). Other songs fall within the more ambitious TOTBL-like category, such a mesmorizing slowburner (and album opener) "Pioneer to the Falls", "Pace is the Trick", "Rest My Chemistry", and the closer "The Lighthouse", which is haunting in many respects and the perfect way to close things of. There are unfortunately also a couple of songs such as "The Scale" and "Who Do You Think" that don't grab you and really don't seem to fit in very well in this set.

Interpol has not gone into any new musical direction or even expanded dramarically on what it has done before, which some might call a lack in ambition. But there are a lot of great tunes on this album, and in the end that is what it's about. I saw Interpol play a number of the new songs at Coachella a few months ago, and live they sound better than ever, including on the new songs.