Well, I must say. It has been an exciting couple days here at Pout HQ. From new Madlib to Strawberry Jam’s leak to Transformers referencing funk, it seems the lull we experienced lately has dissipated.
This notion is even further solidified by Interpol’s Our Love to Admire coming through our doors.
Like with Strawberry Jam, Interpol’s latest was on our pre-release hype radar, with us scouring the internet for any sort of hint about the sound of the next record.
And now, with it presented in full in front of me, I don’t know if I can truly justify that behaviour.
This isn’t to say that the new album is bad - or disappointing, even. In fact, I am pretty sure I am enjoying it more than Antics (although it goes without saying that the band won’t hit the dizzying focused heights of Turn On the Bright Lights ever again). It’s just that… it sounds like Interpol. Like, woah. Who would have thunk it?
The classic Interpol sound returns, to encroach upon another 47 minutes of your life per sitting. Of course, there are some flourishes. The brief horns that turn up near the end of “Pioneer to the Falls”, for example. Or the piano that gets pushed waaayyy to the background in “No I in Threesome”. These examples probably pale in comparison to the album’s finale, “The Lighthouse”, which, as advertised, is a funeral dirge that is pretty percussion-free, based entirely around guitar & vocals. The track was even recorded with a 50-year-old poisoned guitar, causing Daniel’s hands to blister & hurt as he played. Which, I guess, is kind of badass, despite finishing the album on such a solemn note.
Overall though, it is an Interpol album. Some may be complaining that it sounds “too mainstream” or that the production pushes the guitar and vocals too far towards the front, dismissing the rhythm section that used to be centrepiece. I won’t deny that I heard it too, but there is a fix for that: it’s called your EQ. At the end of the day, I’m glad to have been given the opportunity to peruse Interpol’s love.
It is a good place to be.
your love to sample:
Interpol - Pioneer to the Falls.
Interpol - No I in Threesome.
Our Love to Admire hits shelves on July 10th. You can pre-order it from Amazon as either a typical CD (for a mere $10 bucks!) or in Special Format (which comes with a bound, CD-sized hard covered 24-page book, the CD and a poster).
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