Interpol: Turn On the Bright Lights poll

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

the pavements really are a mess, tho

i dunno if its overrated, but it's memorable anyway. i still remember it! and i haven't listened to the album since it came out.

^willing to bet you're not alone in your experience

i walk around the house sometimes singing "i got a broken hip, uh huh, uh huh" and i haven't heard that song in over a decade. which is why i don't remember that it's actually broken face and not broken hip. i like lou reed!

Antics is such a different record, and just as good. With the exception of "Length of Love," there are no bad songs on it.

It's lighter, which isn't saying much, and the songs are more . . . muscular?

i actually have been playing this album a lot for the past 2-3 weeks... i originally just wanted to listen to "Stella" but i dig the entire album. that being said, "Stella" is still my favorite and "Leif" is number 2.

actually I think "friends don't waste wine when there's words to sell" is a solid line.

This is a good record. They're kind of a fun band to tool on, but they'll have a killer greatest hits record by the time they're done.

Obstacle 1

2nd album still much, much better than this one

wait, what. was just gonna say "Evil" craps over everything here, shame about the rest of the album.

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

"I know you've supported me for a long time, somehow I'm not impressed" would be a classic Malkmus line.

it's a good line.

I don't know if it's right but I suspected from the start that Banks wrote the lyrics really quickly as placeholders and then the producer was like "fuck it, 9/11" and they just put it out as is.

2nd album still much, much better than this one

Antics is such a different record, and just as good.

j0hn D and kshighway tag teamin the challops

i really like the cover, and I read a thing with peter saville once where he said he liked it and it reminded him of something he would do and that he liked that it was sortof gallery catalogue literate and jokey in that way even as it was kinda pretentious, all of which I agree with. Also a pretty good representation of the album's sound somehow.

Undecided between Untitled and PDA after listening to it again. Does remind me a lot of just moving to London and a girl I was seeing back then, but mainly in a good way. Love the bass-playing on this record.

finally had a chance to re-listen to this today. it really starts off strong but then it slows down. it ends with a few great moments. i really wanted to hate this today but couldn't.

voting for "The New" because a girl i was seeing at the time sent me the lyrics to that song when we were starting to have some problems. so i'm sure that will be the only vote for that song but it was real personal at the time. i forgot all about that incident until just an hour ago...

2nd album still much, much better than this one

Antics is such a different record, and just as good.

j0hn D and kshighway tag teamin the challops

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Thursday, August 20, 2009 1:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

It's seems like no one ever talks about Antics, and it's seriously just as good as Turn on the Bright Lights.

I remember being esp. blown away by "Next Exit" because it was so fucking upbeat. And there's much more organ/weird guitar stuff going on there.

Of course, the record doesn't stay upbeat. "Public Pervert," "Take You on a Cruise," even fucking "A Time To Be So Small" are pretty dark. But dark in different way than the songs from their first record.

It's difficult to describe.

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.