Let Us Anticipate Interpol - El Pintor 9/9/2014

Alfred, if you're misquoting what I think you're misquoting, it's "Hey, who's on trial?"

(When did I become Captain Save-a-Pol?)

kessler just doesn't seem to have progressed technically or creatively as a guitarist or songwriter in a decade, they use a very limited set of chords, keys, and tones. really sucks because i love this band, top 10 of all time, but everything after Antics is so much less inspired, and they haven't gone anywhere since OLTA lyrically or musically. and it's a shame about OLTA because half of those songs are phenomenal, but the trebly, compressed production makes it so much worse. there's so little bass! the s/t and el pintor are produced well but the songwriting is not there, and it sounds like they're at a loss for ideas. there's so little identity in these songs, no wonder they couldn't think of anything else to call it other than a fucking acronym of their name, right after a self-titled. i just think it's a lack of inspiration and musical progression, maybe because kessler keeps bringing in old riffs and patterns. paul's schtick is getting old too, can the man write a song that's not about a fucking girl?

'Couldn't they just ProTools it into the pocket?'

NOoooo! I like how it's not locked down and the bass drags at the drums. This only works because Fogarino, as you say, is spot-on, and that the bass is usually root-fifth and the uptempo BPMs. If the basslines were more complex I'd find it more bother but as it is, I like how the songs hold together.

'kessler just doesn't seem to have progressed technically or creatively as a guitarist or songwriter in a decade, they use a very limited set of chords, keys, and tones'

For some of this, this is a plus.

it's not surprising or exciting though. this record and the s/t just drone on, nothing jumps out except for a handful of songs on each (Summer Well, Barricade, Memory Serves, My Desire, Ancient Ways). the well is dry, it's just this dead, plodding sound. banks' vocals are so washed out i can't hear most of his lyrics, which used to jump right out!

Geordie! You posting on ILM is becoming a new habit or something!

I will probably get used to the more... um, organic bass-playing, I guess. I'm trying to think of a synonym that isn't "sloppy" because it isn't sloppy so much as just looser and more casual than usual. It's just that I am used to a a real *precision* from Interpol, that's one of the things I associate with them, very precise, interlocking accuracy. I believe, from interviews, that they were aiming for a more immediate, organic, "live" feel to the record. They did say that they had written songs that could go to a record, or go straight to being played at gigs, and they've certainly accomplished that. It's very immediate and direct and does sound mostly like a live performance (I hear very few overdubs. Everything is very much as they play it live.) But I guess that looseness is unexpected from *them* and I keep wanting to nudge Paul back into the pocket. I expect precision from this band. Heavens, I mean next they'll be playing gigs with their ties loosened and their top buttons unbuttoned. Whatever next.

Spazz, I find your commentary frankly mystifying. Like, are you sure that it's Interpol that's changed, and not you? Maybe you have grown out of them; maybe your life and your interests have changed, and you just don't like them any more. But "I don't like them any more" is not the same thing as "they have run out of ideas and failed to progress."

Are you actually still listening to the older albums, or are you just relying on your memories of what they sounded like to you at the time? Because this complaint of "the vocals are obscured now, they were never obscured in the early days" DUDE have you listened to TOTBL recently, because every single vocal on that record is shouted, distorted, buried, spat out through a mouthful of ice and otherwise obscured. I would suggest that you sit down and listen to the first four albums, back to back, in order, and listen to the actual records, not your memory of the role they played in your life, in 2004.

Kessler not progressing technically as a guitarist or a songwriter? I think you are mistaking two things here:

1) Interpol are a band with a very defined, and specific identity. They have a distinct Style, they have distinct moods and sonic palettes. I don't know what you're expecting Kessler to do differently - but expecting him to turn up and start shredding on a solo or something is like expecting him to turn up in sweatpants and a tank top. That isn't who he is. Complaining that Interpol have a stylistic schtick and that they stick to it is like complaining that the Jesus and Mary Chain only have 3 songs. Yes, they do. That's the point. (They're fucking fantastic songs, though.)

2) Kessler progressing as a songwriter/musician. I'm kinda lucky here, in that they came to me as a single body of work, that I could listen to each album for a week, and compare, and see very easily what progressed and changed and what didn't, rather than having the expectations of these songs soundtracking periods of my life. It's quite obvious when Kessler learns a new trick, because he ends up using it on every song on an album. He got a Gretsch with a tremolo arm on OLTA, so you get a tonebend on every song. He learned how to play piano just before the S/T, so there's piano on every song on that album. He learned how to do trills and hammer-ons for El Pintor, so he's doing those little flamboyant trills on every song now. It's kind of adorable, actually. He is not a particularly technical guitarist, has never pretended to be, and has never expressed any interest in being. He very deliberately uses a spare, minimal style which is enough to play the songs he writes, and no more. But if you think he hasn't progressed as a musician, then you haven't been paying attention to what he's been playing.

Coming to the body of work as a whole, it's really easy to see the progression. Sound-washes and tons of effects on TOTBL. Stripping off the effects and riffing away on Antics. Getting harder edged and more RAWK on OLTA. Becoming more dense and layered and "left field" with the arrangements on the S/T (OK, I kinda laugh when Kessler said that because it's about 5 degrees off centre, but I see what he means.) Then stripping it back and going for a more immediate live sound on El Pintor. It's true, they never stray very far from their Stylistic Statement, but there's a lot of movement around that Style.

The only album I'm not "in love with" is OLTA - that seemed like a couple of really good songs (though I pick really different songs to you - Mammoth, Rest My Chemistry and The Lighthouse) with some less successfully stuff around. But I skip songs on Antics and TOTBL,too (especially Antics; I never play the first or last track if I can help it)!

You're allowed to say "I don't like what Interpol does any more." But the idea that nothing is moving in there, because you don't like it, that's just stupid and kind of annoying for you to keep repeating.

paul's schtick is getting old too, can the man write a song that's not about a fucking girl?

And this? This is just fucking stupid. For real? OK, you can't actually make out any of the lyrics any more, but you are convinced that they are just about "a fucking girl"?

For a start, seriously, what the fuck? Yes, it's terrible to write songs that are about or from the viewpoint of women. Absolutely appalling. He should stick to writing about males and male subjects and male interests. Because that's what lyrics should be. None of this girl shit.

Do you think that because there are women in many of these songs, that they are all just about Paul's romantic relationships? Named women, characters in stories, some of them romantic props, yes, some of them fully formed human beings who run rings around him, or even occasionally have lives independent of him. (One of the things I like about Banks' lyrics is that they are full of women, and those women are often Rose Tylers, not Amy Ponds.)

But the thing is, that they are not. They're sometimes about "you and I" and you're projecting if you think that always has to be a romantic relationship. Sometimes they're about "he and she" like characters in a play. Sometimes they're named girls with their own back stories, whether they're Stella or Sandy or Rosemary. He writes a lot of songs about humans. Half those humans are females. That's the way humans work. And sometimes he writes songs that turn out to be about crabs watching a father and a son from the side of the boat.

Seeing as how this is the first time they've been kind enough to provide lyric sheets, I've been reading the stated lyrics, and some of them are, yes, about romantic relationships. Some of them seem to be about familial relationships. Some of them aren't about relationships at all; they're about the Ocean, or the City and jeez, I'm not actually sure what Everything Is Wrong is about, it could be about personal disaster, it could be about something more societal or political. The lyrics are vague and abstract and allow many interpretations.

But, y'know, if you're listening to every vague and abstract lyric, and you've just decided that they're all "about a fucking girl" man, that really might be a problem with your interpretative facilities, not with what is happening in the actual lyrics.

alright branwell, let me ask you this - how come they never do that screaming guitar chord in untitled live?

Which screaming guitar chord? Untitled is another of the tracks I tend to skip.

And mostly they don't do anything live in Untitled because they've played it, like, once in the past 5 years?

They've brought a lot of stuff from the first two albums back into the set list for this tour, but jeez "they don't play the old material like they used to" is kind of a lamer complaint.

I know we're coming at this from 2 different sides, where you have this 12 year history to be disappointed, and I'm a brand new fan who had the whole catalogue dumped in my lap 9 months ago.

But I seriously do not understand the mentality of people who are like "It's all downhill from TOTBL" when I just feel like "WTF, TOTBL isn't even their best album?"

they played it first at nearly every single show for three or four years. the chord first occurs at around :53 seconds into untitled, repeats throughout the song, sometimes it slides down the neck, sometimes just a stab. really cool cutting part that sorta makes the song, and paul doesn't play his guitar at all live until midway through. always mystified me. it's not a hard part to replicate live or play...?

Maybe they got *bored* with playing a 12-year-old song exactly the same way, every day for three or four years?

What do you want me to do, ring them up and ask them?

(That was a joke, by the way.)

i was a casual fan since antics came out when i was 12, liked OLTA when it came out, then got super duper fucking obsessed with them when i was 16 and madly in love with a girl. it was such a great time. i'll always love Interpol for those first two perfect records. i thought Paul Banks circa 2000-2005 was the coolest fucking dude on the planet, i dressed like him, i watched and listened to hours of interviews and bootlegs, i mean total obsession. it was great. the only way i can think of right now to describe my reaction to them post-2005 is they're just not as subtle. they've been unspooling their beautiful weird inexplicable coolness into boring and uninspired songs, lame vocal tics... ehhh, honestly, it's most disappointing to me that kessler isn't able or doesn't want to progress as a musician or a guitarist, in his playing, his melodies, or his tones.

no, they've never done that guitar part live

Spazz. If you were 12 when Antics came out, that makes you 22 now. It's HIGHLY LIKELY that you will no longer enjoy the music you liked when you were a pre-pubescent now that you are in your early adulthood. You do not like the music now, because you are not the same person now. I was embarrassed as fuck, when I was 22, by the music and artists I liked when I was 12. (I came back to that music in my 30s, and was surprised to find that I had changed, my opinion on that music had changed back to good.) It's called growing up.

I've given three specific examples in which Kessler has progressed as a musician (tonebends, piano, trills) and you're just ignoring that in favour of the example of: one chord from a song they wrote fifteen years ago?

It's not going to be helpful to either of us to continue this conversation.

But "I don't like them any more" is not the same thing as "they have run out of ideas and failed to progress."

but it is. "They have run out of ideas and failed to progress" leads to "I don't like them anymore."

You can say "you've reversed the sentence" but that's how it works

"A 22 year old doesn't like the same things he liked when he was 12" is not the same thing as "the band have run out of ideas."

And you never liked them, Alfred, so I don't know why you're taking this tack.

You know what I liked when I was 12? Duran Duran. They'd just released Rio and it blew my mind, and changed my life and I went back and absorbed the first album, and read every interview I could get my hands on, and they deeply informed my preteen ideas of What Glamour Was, and What Music Was, and all that shit.

Then puberty happened, and punk rock happened, and I grew up, and when I was 22, OMG, I was really into My Bloody Valentine and Ride and Lush and Stereolab and amazing exciting music like that, and OMG, it was so fucking *embarrassing* that I had ever liked Duran Duran.

But if you asked me, in 1993, what was wrong with Duran Duran, I wouldn't have said "eh, I grew up", I would have talked about how shallow LeBon's lyrics were and how tedious their idea of glamour was, and what was with all those dumb songs about fashion and girls. And my god, they had made no musical progression at all, they were still mucking about with synths like it was the goddamn fucking 80s and didn't everyone know it was all about shoegaze and Cathedrals of Sound now? I mean, for fucks sake. The Wedding Album, how limp, how lifeless, how embarrassing, i mean, yeah, I still have this nostalgic sense that Rio was once very important to me, but my god, don't ask me to listen to this Come Undone and Ordinary World bullshit, they are totally out of ideas, and my god, Nick Rhodes hasn't even changed his haircut, let alone his sound, there's no development here, and this is a TERRIBLE. ALBUM.

Of course, I was wrong. Duran Duran were a band with a specific style, but with many peaks and troughs, and huge amounts of development and change and progression over the years. I was just embarrassed, at 22, that the band they were in 1993, was not the band I remembered from childhood. It wasn't that Duran Duran hadn't changed, it was that I had. A lot.

And of course, now I listen to Come Undone and know that 22 year old me was a fucking idiot.

But you know, growing up, that's how it works.

I look forward to the day when bands are obliged to fill in personal development plans with smart objectives so that progress becomes objective and measurable, avoiding this rather subjective debate.

I'm about to be REALLY FUCKING MEAN. Avert your eyes.

https://33.media.tumblr.com/d1dfb918879f11833e0389769ea47f4b/tumblr_nbpavnAORU1qgze9ho1_400.pnghttps://38.media.tumblr.com/52ac9b477a8c19be6294477e38c37781/tumblr_nbpavnAORU1qgze9ho2_500.png

One of these men is 40. The other is 35. One of these men is a nonsmoking vegetarian. The other? Well, the less said the better.

CHOOSE YOUR LIFESTYLE WISELY, KIDS.

OK, that was deeply and unacceptably mean.

JE NE REGRETTE RIEN!!!!

Sometimes I think BraNwell is the only person on this forum who understands fandom.

No, I just think I'm the only person left who actually *is* still a fan, as opposed to a jaded music critic or jaded wannabe music critic. Sigh. :-/

ILM is not a kind place to fans.

ILM is not a kind place to fans

this record is good, the only song that edges out of their comfort zone is "tidal wave" and it's probably the best song here, the rest is kinda just reexploring the boundaries of antics but i'm into that

I feel really disloyal loving Tidal Wave (which is probably my favourite song - that or Everything Is Wrong) because it's the only song that Brandon *doesn't* play on.

(Oh! It's Roger Manning Jr of Jellyfish/Moog Cookbook etc. No wonder.)

omg roger manning jr.

Bran, like I said, I didn't become OBSESSED with Interpol - complete fandom - until ages 16-18. Also, I never said I didn't like TOTBL, Antics, or parts of OLTA anymore. I still listen to them regularly. There are so many bands that I became OBSESSED with at the same time or several years earlier, that I still follow and am surprised & impressed by. I hope you don't think I'm any less of an Interpol fan than you, if I wasn't I wouldn't have bothered to listen to everything they do and each member does despite being continually disappointed, because of the quality of the early work. I have not grown out of Interpol. I want them to make something good. They have, IMHO, run out of ideas and keep writing and re-writing the same songs into the ground. It doesn't resonate with me.

one thing i don't quite get is when branwell suddenly became a huge interpol fan. did not know about this at all until some veiled references a year ago or so.

When? February 2014.

How? Can You Force Yourself To Like A Record Through Blunt-Force Repetition?

I did a project to see if I could make myself like an album I'd previously hated by listening to it 22 times in a week. I accidentally made myself completely obsessed with the band in the process.

WHY? Two words: Brandon Curtis. (I think my obsessed with Secret Machines and Los Bros Curtis is long documented on this board.) He made me go see them back in February and again over the summer and I was kinda like a cat watching them, like "hmmmmm" and when I told him "I don't want to see your new band any more, I'm starting to get kind of a crush here" he started deliberately feeding me all kinds of KesslerFacts to deliberately provoke and feed the crush. And now I'm obsessed with Interpol.

I'm trying to work out what it is that produces and drives obsessions like this, and I definitely think that, like, other people loathing them (and being hugely outspoken about it) really actually drives and reinforces that kind of "no one loves them like I love them!" sense of persecution that really feeds obsession. I'm finding it very curious as a phenomenon, even as I'm being tossed about on the horns of the obsession.

Y'know, when I accused them of "turning into Ride" I didn't think they'd go whole hog and use the cover for Nowhere as the backdrop of their current stage design:

http://38.media.tumblr.com/b421a323fdd1e5153848f3ee5855559c/tumblr_nc1b4mWdhZ1tfqokdo1_1280.jpg

Seriously, that's kinda shameless, guys.

New video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu1SEZNPcBk

(For Twice As Hard, which is weird, coz I thought they recently filmed a video for My Desire? Guess I was wrong about that.)

First the surfing, now the boxing? Hmmm. They do seem to presenting themselves in a certain way at the moment, and that way is coded particularly sporty and, well, jock, to use the American term. It's... well, it seems a deliberate counter-image to their previous image. But personally, I still find it, well, hmmmm. Wish Paul could keep his little hobbies out of the band, eh, but who am I to complain.

p.s. Number 7 on the album charts in the US. Apparently!

I think the first three songs on the new album are stupendous, but I haven't been able to get into the rest of the record. That's par for the course with everything after the debut: 3 or 4 songs I absolutely love, and then a bunch of filler I'll never again listen to. Not that I'm complaining: put 'em together, those 3 or 4 songs per record are worth it.

That's ridiculous because this specific album is so back-loaded. If it were up to me, I'd skip the singles and listen to the album from My Blue Supreme on out. (Heh, iTunes tells me that's exactly what I tend to do.)

But I do realise I may just be listening for a different band.

album gets more oceanic as it gets deeper.

speaking of there are a lot of ocean metaphors on this one? or maybe i'm just noticing

Yeah, there's a lot of sea, of ocean, of tide, the colour blue. It seems to be a recurrent theme. (I still wish The Depths wasn't left off the album, either.)

Finally bought it this morning at Target. $9.99, two bonus tracks ("Malfeasance" and a live version of "Slow Hands").

Annoyed about that bonus track not being available in the UK. I still haven't heard it. :-(

Surprised Boots (or whatever) didn't make the same deal Target did. Or do big grocery/drugstore chains in the UK not get deluxe versions of albums?

Boots don't sell albums! I suppose the bigger Sainsburys or whatever might sell the top 10 albums, but they certainly don't make a draw of it.

Ugh, Interpol are on One Week One Band this week, and even just the first fucking entry has reminded me of all the reasons that I HAAAAAAAAAAAAAATED them for so long.

http://oneweekoneband.tumblr.com/post/98130387039/an-introduction

Every. Single. Fucking. Cliche. just trotted blithely out. I don't hate the band any longer, but I really REALLY hate the way that people write about them. I mean, clearly I enjoy feeling conflicted, but seriously, just... argh.

Paul Banks on Comedy Bang! Bang! today

(the podcast)

Wow, what do I haaaaate more, Paul Banks or ~comedy~.

(There's a reason Kessler is my favourite; he goes on podcasts to talk about yummy vegetarian food for an hour.)