Interpol

Interpol
Turn on the Bright Lights
Matador Records, 2002
Pick This Up!

Remember that late-autumn weekend back in college? The one where we went to that off-campus party and that girl you had just started seeing ended up disappearing with that lacrosse player and then stopped returning your calls? For days you sat on the futon in your room watching Mickey Rourke movies with the sound off and listening to some band no one ever heard of.

That band wasn't Interpol. They didn't exist then. But it would be them today. Strip the Psychedelic Furs of any shred of optimism or joy and you have Interpol's sound. Their sparse, chiming guitars and dark lyrics hold an eerie ability to find and illuminate your insecurities. The indie press is heralding them as the next Joy Division, Cure, or Radiohead -- depending on which reference better suits its readership at the time -- but despite the similarities, Interpol rings unique (especially in a music landscape that has been dominated by nu-metal dribble for the past several years).

From "Untitled", the nearly wordless opening track on Turn on the Bright Lights, the band caters to solitude and introspection. "Untitled" opened and set the mood for their recent show at Boston's Avalon Ballroom, and what followed was 90 minutes of some of the most straightforward and earnest alternative rock to grace that venue in some time.

Not six months earlier, the Furs played the same stage (to a largely over-lapping audience) and Richard Butler's melodramatic stage antics killed what should have been a poignant -- if also nostalgic -- performance. Interpol committed no such sin. Paul Banks stared unflinching into the crowd and delivered his message like a betrayed lover, framed by the tightly wound score from guitarist Daniel Kessler, and bassist Carlos Dengler. The fan favorite was Stella (track 8 on Turn on the Bright Lights), and after the show the crowd filed out of Avalon the way it would be expected: ruminating, alone, and satisfied.

Interpol is a band doomed to linger on the fringes of commercial acceptance (which may not be a bad thing). Their brooding sound won't win much airplay from Big Corporate Radio unless mass-market tastes make a significant shift toward the melancholy . But Turn on the Bright Lights is an exceptional record by nearly every other measure, and Interpol is a band worth the extra effort to see live. Just don't expect a mosh pit.

Interpol
Turn on the Bright Lights
Matador Records, 2002
Pick This Up!