Interpol: Turn On the Bright Lights poll

peaking at number 101 in the uk? really??

i still hate the cover. their website at teh time of this album used to be *gorgeous* however.

isn't the cover a stanley kubrick photograph or something?

voted obstacle 1. it was the first thing that grabbed me about the album. i listened the fuck out of this when it first came out. don't think i ever need to hear it again though.

Listened to this for the first time in years yesterday, coincidentally. Some really strong songs but it does dip in the second half and the lyrics are still a major, uh, obstacle. From the banal "Her stories are boring and stuff, she's always calling my bluff" to the ridiculous "
I feel like love is in the kitchen with a culinary eye" to the LOL moment of "Oh look it's stopped snowing!"

secret answer: hands away

This is about Stella vs. Leif for me. And I think the latter will prevail eventually. Such a great album.

it reminds me of falling in love with my girlfriend and starting to drive my own car. they toured the shit out of this album, we went to see them three times before we graduated (in FL no less) and the first time we saw them we were 15 wearing jeans and bright-colored t-shirts and literally everyone there was heroin-chic skinny in all black smoking cigarettes/cloves and looking at us like wtf are you doing here. it was great. indie seemed so cool back then, now i'm jaded and bored... ;_; but i still love my girlfriend :

The album is this lifestyle condensed in musical form. Thankfully I was 29 when I first heard the album.

"Obstacle 1."

Voted Obstacle 1. I haven't listened to this album in years, but watching the Obstacle 1 clip I realized I had forgotten how wicked a drummer Sam Fogarino is.

i like stella a lot, because it's so memorable.

i also like untitled a lot.

"PDA" all the way!

lots of good choices but i will probably go obstacle 1 or nyc cause they really are the best.

We have 200 couches! Where you can sleep toniiiiight!

I voted "Obstacle 1" but "The New" is also really great. It's probably for the best that I can't say how it goes, lyrically.

untitled

god it seems like ages ago when i listened to the shit out of this album. it's great but i kind of associate it with a really shitty period when i was in college. i haven't really listened to it since then.

first glance at the track list and i'd say either track 1 or 2

NYC sounds too boring, doesn't really do much for me

The New is HEART

BREAKING

c'mon--"i know you've supported me for a long time / somehow i'm not impressed" !!!

eh. maybe it'll grow on me.

might vote for Obstacle 1, it really gets the adrenaline going.

Stella was a diver!

also, what kind of filter is this guy singing through?

The end of "Leif Erikson" is one of the greatest endings to ANY indie rock song of the 2000s. Seriously, I cannot think of many moments I love more than the part when Banks sings, "You come here to me, we'll collect those lonely parts and set them down, you come here to me," and then the controlled "solo" comes in right before he finishes those lines and Banks just keeps singing.

We have 200 couches! Where you can sleep toniiiiight!

― jaymc, Wednesday, 19 August 2009 16:18 (21 minutes ago) Bookmark

my best friend's from poland and um he has a beard

i don't know how many plays i'll ever give this album again tho. the lyrics are really terrible.

her love's a pony

Wakeboarding legend Steve Shasta OTM.

the lyrics are really terrible.

Yeah, but in a camp sort of way.

NYC

second the opinion that for the most part the lyrics are really terrible

would you care about the lyrics if they weren't delivered so ponderously?

I love NYC because interpol are kinda that band that you've decided you've basically already heard after you see the press shots, but NYC was lusher and more beautiful than that. And yeah, um, stately. It wasn't really Joy Division with better haircuts, it makes me think a little of hearing an INXS covering the Shangri Las, this mossed over nostalgia, wind-tunnel 80's ambience. It basically portrayed a world-weary metropolitanism I was sure I would cultivate when I finally got out of this two bit town, and a quick glance at my CD collection around that time was like a dash snow photo shoot, all these glamorously (I thought) vacant run down pretty boys with hollow eyes, so yeah this song is a bit of a monument to that time for me.

I dunno, I'm a lyrics guy, I generally pay attention to how they're constructed and what they're trying to convey.

I tried to convince myself at some point that Banks was trying to be funny with his lyrics. I did not convince myself.

You're wasting time, Shakey.

Wasting time paying attention to lyrics...? does not compute

I enjoy Interpol (I don't even really get the hate for the last album, which I like as much as everything else of theirs), I just sorta ignore their lyrics when I hear them now.

On Interpolyrics.

yeah don't worry its not like I puzzled over them or anything. The lines that stand out are bad enough, they didn't make me wanna dig in any deeper or anything

Top Ten Worst Lines on Interpol's First Album

I smell a poll

yeah, i knew there was a bad smell

The poll is in the kitchen with a culinary eye.

i think one of the great assets of untitled is that the relative lack of lyrics make it difficult for him to fuck them up with silliness. i think the sentiment of the song is lovely and he almost sounds like he means it.

also the guitar intro is one of my favourite opening bits to a record of all time

I only ever really heard this one album by them, and I liked it a lot at the time, and of course I've read and heard all the comparisons to '80s post-punk bands, etc, ad nauseum, but I listened to "Leif Erikson" again just now, as I thought I'd forgotten it, and for the first time, really, I heard the Chameleons* influence so loud and fucking clear that I couldn't help my mouse finger voting for it in a fit of nostalgic love. Nostalgia for 2002 or 1983 I have no idea?

*Also not just the Chameleons, but Script of the Bridge specifically.

(Lol, jumbled run-on sentence!)

2nd album still much, much better than this one

the way I've rationalized Paul Banks as a lyricist is that his lyrics are so strange and weird and awful that they help contribute to the overall feeling of unreality and "world-weary metropolitanism" that IKR mentioned upthread

also, it beats thinking about who Stella was and why was she always going down on Paul Banks

i don't know, John. This one's got a lot more testosterone about it than the 2nd one imo.

xp

As much as I still love "PDA," I honestly couldn't tell you the last time I played this album.

i always thought that the lyrics sounded like they were in one language first and then put thru some internet translating machine and put into english. or that there was some random indie rock lyric generator out there that you could set for post-punk.

not a problem either way for me.

"subway she is a porno" really is a great pixies song line that never was.

^up there with "the snot has caked against my pants" as one of the most overrated lyrics ever IMO

i can't believe how old this is, it feels so recent. man are the years flying by.

i remember buying the EP first and was so excited for this release that i probably bought it on the release day.

i think this is the first album i listened to bc of a pitchfork review and bc i liked it so much ended up being an annoying pitchfork kid in hs, sorry

(that apology is to the world for how i was when i was 16)

great alb

i think this is the first album i listened to bc of a pitchfork review and bc i liked it so much ended up being an annoying pitchfork kid in hs, sorry

wow, i have loved this album MOST OF MY LIFE

Super drunk performance of The New from 2001

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I5oPoF3CfQ

Great clip! Weird they were already pretty big before the album. I’d forgotten that. I really can’t recommend the Lizzy Goodman book (Meet Me In The Bathroom) enough. I’m assuming anyone who loves TOTBL has read it but y’all need to if not. It’s really funny too.

They weren't, it was a coincidental one-off, somebody dropped out of the festival last minute and they booked Interpol like a week before. Did they play any UK gigs in 2001? the Peel session came out in April, I think they got signed off Chris Lombardi hearing that

ugh this album is so great

it’s a hard life, the atmosphere here is superior and the songcraft on antics is tighter

fave song on this is stella followed rapidly by hands away

my favorite things about this album are the drums and the laser guitars

otm

the latter half of pda

― mookieproof, Wednesday, 19 August 2009 04:48 (twelve years ago) link

^ My favorite thing this band has ever done is that outro jammer. It's very pretty!

this album holds up perfectly of course. my vote today might be stella.

NYC would be my vote

Anyone ever snag an original first pressing 150 gram vinyl copy? It’s only one piece of vinyl but sounds better than I’ve ever heard it. Only ever heard it on cd previously. I don’t go in too much for the old cd vs vinyl wars but there’s no denying it in this particular case.

I think the upcoming 20th anniversary might provoke more reissues and deluxe editions and such, they do tend to go in for that stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-6321NWxOE

what a dope drum part

one of the best. it's just clever enough without ever being tryhard

This is interesting, i don't think i appreciated just how involved Carlos was in the songwriting

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/interpols-turn-on-the-bright-lights-at-10-an-oral/

what a dope drum part

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Wednesday, February 2, 2022 12:53 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Dat hi hat

He plays my favorite part wrong (no shame, it's an incredibly difficult section).

This guy plays it pretty all right imho:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6AN1LQBpx8

whoops wrong vid, this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4yIuBpqE-Y

iirc Sam said that he copped that move from his predecessor who left Interpol for Saetia lol

I've never made it through this album. They sounded too much like a carbon copy of Joy Division. It made me angry.

it barely sounds like jd, go listen to it again

Strokes and Interpol sound vaguely like VU/Television and Joy Division but with all the charisma sucked out of the original bands.

"Obstacle 1" sounds like a JD outtake, albeit with the vocals in a slightly higher register.

Haven't listened to this since I was probably 16. Pleasantly suprised to find it still holds up (though with a touch more melodrama than I can enjoy)

For the hundredth time, they sound like the chameleons not joy division.