the new

It was a chilly October weekend the first time I saw Interpol live. It was an intimate show at a smoky club in Columbus, Ohio. I was all by myself, which made no difference because the beauty of Interpol's music is its ability to shroud you in a cocoon-like cloud of somber solitude. Their music is perfect for a solo late night drive or an evening spent waiting for the sun to come up. I stood there as they played all of my favorite songs from their seminal debut, "Turn on the Bright Lights", and their companion piece follow-up, "Antics." Those two albums defined my college experience in their tales of lost love, failure, and other forms of disappointment, but ultimately their music can be funny and sexy, which also aptly describes my college experience.

I'm out of college now and Interpol is back with a new album. How am I to react to it you ask? I think it's another addition to an already promising catalog of music. Pitchforkmedia proclaimed their first album had shades of greatness comparable to Radiohead's "OK Computer" and Joy Division's "Closer", which both albums are obvious influences on their sound, but they are not rehash of the unremembered 80s goth/post-punk scene. You never feel like they fight that in their music because their sound would have shifted more dramatically on the second album, but they continue to grow in a bigger, more dense sound that pushes the definition of what they do so well. "Our Love to Admire" is everything you want from Interpol but better and a little more ambitious. It's an attempt to move an audience of keen listeners in a promising new direction. They're confident and unflinching in their sonic focus and for that I hope their minimal but quietly grand gestures of artistic evolution continues to flourish.

"Our Love to Admire" highlights:
*"Pioneer Falls"
*"Rest My Chemistry"
*"All Fired Up"
*"The Lighthouse"