Interpol: Turn On the Bright Lights poll

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.

And I really hope Interpol is better live than watching YouTube videos has led me to believe. Talk about a dropoff in quality from record to video. Yikes, it's bad.

This, for example, is awful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipsW5YSAqr8

at the time that i saw them they were known for playing flawlessly. perfect mood, perfect atmosphere. i can see how some may have thought it was boring, but i loved it. the first show was by far the best for me, though. i just didn't dig Antics, they just sort of lost the vibe that i loved about Turn On the Bright Lights. i wanted to love Antics, i listened to it a lot at the time, but i knew immediately when i heard it that they weren't going in a direction i wasn't into.

i'm still undecided on this poll, its a toss up between untitled and hands away

that they *were* going in a direction i wasn't into

I kinda hate these guys while still acknowledging the odd excellent track ("Evil," "Obstacle 1"). My Stylus review of the third album still gets me hate mail.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

let's see about this ham

I blame NYC for making me initially overrate this band. It made me think Paul Banks was being deliberately mysterious and opaque, until subsequent albums confirmed that he's just a shitty lyricist. The one track I like off Antics, Next Exit, has a similar effect - that night-drive-through-the-city feel.

I like the line "her stories are boring and stuff." I'm probably the only one.

Nope

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

12
11
10
8
7
6

clearly i need to relisted to leif erickson

relisten probably

this is one of those albums that always makes me really sad. maybe b/c it was such a college album, and it puts me right back on campus. maybe because of his voice. maybe both.

poll distribution actually more or less reflects my feelings abt this album.

i didn't vote but i would have voted for The New or Lief E

i still listen to this album a fair bit

http://twitter.com/zizekspeaks/status/5484005532

a hero over at the Interpol reddit has leaked a bunch of outtakes & alternate mixes from the TOTBL sessions, including new unheard versions of "Gavilan"/"Cubed" and "Precipitate" (!!). he also put up a rough mix of the album that has a totally different sequence and doesn't have "Untitled." CHECK IT OUT https://www.reddit.com/user/G_Dub22/submitted/

the rough mix of the album is really cool- guitars on "PDA" have much more bite. not nearly as much reverb as on the finished LP

This is great.

wow fuck..

the last 30 seconds of this alt Obstacle 1 are way better than the finished mix. those tracked vocals! wonder why they changed it.

i wonder why they left off the completed versions of Precipitate and Gavilan off the reissue. they even put a shitty Gavilan demo on there.

just for posterity's sake, this what TOTBL almost looked like:

1. Say Hello to the Angels
2. NYC
3. Obstacle 1
4. Precipitate
5. Obstacle 2
6. Hands Away
7. PDA
8. Specialist
9. Leif Erikson
10. Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down
11. The New
12. Gavilan
13. Interlude
14. Roland

flappy thank you so much! check the post that says "Shared the Whole Folder".

i used to listen to this album all the time back in the day. it was perfect for rainy days spent bopping around town going to thrift stores and eating at Indian restaurants.

that poster shared a story about hanging out with the band circa 2005, this bit is so funny to me:

Paul had this vintage leather jacket on. The inner lining of the jacket had this paisley pattern which could obviously only have been seen if you could see the inside of his jacket. But he liked this pattern so much that he had cut a huge portion out of the section below the back of his neck, safety pinned it and folded it over, just so everyone could see the pattern on the inside of the jacket. This was the very first time that I was not impressed by his fashion sensibilities.
Later on, Paul attempted to tune an acoustic guitar to Carlos playing notes on a piano. Carlos would tell him what string he was trying to tune and play the note on the piano for him. Paul was having a hard time with this. Carlos kept telling him "You're making my ears bleed!" and generally made fun of him for not being able to tune a guitar to a piano, and it never got resolved. I was hoping for a magical music moment but it never happened.

haha.

i still really like this first album, as stupid and terrible as all the lyrics are. they were kind of on to something. I wish they'd gotten better at that.

Thanks Flappy!

I saw them in Amsterdam during their very first tour abroad. They just played TOTBL, start to finish. It was fantastic. Still one of the best concerts I've seen tbh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz7AhhTTpxY

quite nice

Hey, my best friend's a butcher, he has sixteen knives
He carries them all over the town at least he tries—oh look, it stopped snowing
My best friend's from Poland and, oh, he has a beard
But they caught him with his case in a public place, that is what we had feared

Leif Erikson is still one of the most beguiling songs I've ever heard. What a way to end a record. I loved Rob Sheffield's quote in the new NYC oral history Meet Me in the Bathroom - something like "I mean, to have your big debut record open with a song called 'Untitled' - the balls on these guys!"

going to see them perform this album live in september , should be interesting .

Could be a thread of its own, but has this always been a thing? Performing an old album in its entirety 20 or 30 years down the line? Always thought that was a band saying: we basically have given up on thinking we'll ever make anything nearly as good ever again.

i think it started at ATP or Pitchfork Fest about a decade ago

yup

Classic or dud: Bands that go on tour playing an old album in its entirety decades down the line

I didn't get to see Interpol live until 2011, and by that point, I guess they realized that they were pretty much only beloved for their first two records, and the setlist reflected that. i loved it as a fan, but i lost a lot of respect for them... it's just such a transparent move that says that the band has no confidence in their new material (and i think the third and fourth records are half good, the fifth one fucking blew).

Agreed on the fourth record being the end for them basically. I saw them on first their TOTBL tour and the one for their second album. They were fantastic, but after that I wasn't interested any more.

This album has such fucking awful lyrics.

the first 5 songs on the s/t record are fucking tremendous though, especially "Summer Well," which is just as good as anything on Antics (their best record imo).

I almost saw them in March 2005 but my family was going to be out of town, then the trip was cancelled and by then tix had sold out. Ugh. Fuck. They were so much better when they were all still coked up and drunk.

xp No way, the lyrics are fucking great