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Articles and Reviews: MUSIC

Our Love To Admire by Interpol (Capitol)

Once upon a time, Interpol seemed like the great white hope. After the release of debut Turn on the Bright Lights (2002), which was influenced by but extended the range of late ’70s/early ’80s post-punk, inviting perhaps invidious comparisons with Joy Division, they looked poised to become the America’s answer to Radiohead. Alas, it was not to be. 2004’s Antics was a creditably solid if hardly earth shattering follow up, but now, having gone in for some career development by making the independent-to-major label switch from Matador to Capital, it would appear that the boys have, as we used to put it quaintly in the old days, ‘sold out’. None of these songs is as atmospheric or as oneirically evocative as their previous work, the employment of Franz Ferdinand producer Rich Costey making them sound lumpenly dull and derivative, for all the world like America’s answer to Franz Ferdinand. I still have a soft spot for this band, based on their first album. But how could they have blown it so massively, even down to the ridiculously pretentious-sounding title? Furthermore, is it still possible for them to redeem themselves? Nice art work, though.

First published in Magill magazine, October/November 2007