Interpol Turn On the Bright LightsInterpol Turn On the Bright Lights






Interpol: Turn On the Bright Lights












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Interpol
Turn On the Bright Lights

Take every great dark band from the '80s and throw them into a blender and out will spit the critics' newest wunderkinds, Interpol. It's impossible not to discuss the band's obvious influences—take Joy Division and squeeze them through a shoegazer filter; throw in some Echo & the Bunnymen, Chameleons, name-your-postpunk-band, ad naseum. Yet the band escapes sounding derivative perhaps for the same reason the electroclash and garage rock movements have been so easy to latch on to—it's so refreshing to hear something that isn't aggressive rap/rock or bubblegum pop that everything old is all of sudden seeming new again. The music may hearken back to—and basically imitate—another era, but at least it's a likeable era. It's also an era that, while on everybody's minds with 24-Hour Party People, has thus far escaped revisionist bands until now.

The CD starts out strictly shoegazer—quiet whirlpool guitars, slightly echoey vocals. You can almost hear the fog swirling around in the background. Then they launch into Joy Division on the second track with strong, angsty vocals taking center stage. From there on out, it's just a trip down the '80s rabbit hole. Interpol are New Yorkers who have their brains and musical influences stuck across the Atlantic, but they still treat their city with an ode in the contemplative "NYC." They accompany their strong guitar-drum-bass simplicity and staccato post-punk beats by relying on singer Daniel Kessler's vocals that immediately evoke Ian Curtis but also contain a strange bit of James' Tim Booth's wavering vulnerability thrown in. This band even manages to make one of their catchiest songs, "Say Hello to the Angels," sound interminably lonely and wistful. It's a combination that's been missing when anger took the stage in alternative music, and we welcome the return.

  Laura Tiffany

     24 Hour Party People Soundtrack


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Interpol: Turn On the Bright Lights

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