Interpol strikes back twice as hard on newest album

For the past twelve years, the Strokes’ biggest competitor for title of “Most New-Yorky Band,” Interpol, have put out series of rock albums, from 2002’s masterpiece Turn On The Bright Lights to 2010’s self-titled release. Their first release grew in stature to be considered one of the defining rock albums of the modern era, while each successive release shrunk in reception — a band slowly losing its way.

But despite what Pitchfork Media might say, the band never lost their way. Despite early comparisons to Joy Division and The Cure, they’ve developed a sound completely unique to themselves: shutter-stomp drum beats, dueling guitar lines, melodic bass lines and Paul Banks’ ALL CAPS baritone. The key word for Interpol has always been interplay: the constantly moving rhythmic duels between all four instrumentalists propelled their greatest hits like “Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down” or “Evil.”

But their latest release, El Pintor (a clever anagram for the band’s name that translates to “the painter”), the band finds themselves lacking an element of their trademark groove, bassist Carlos Dengler. In many ways, Dengler’s style defined Interpol’s early work: his clean, almost disco-like bass lines buoyed numbers like “Obstacle 1.” And in an unconventional twist, Dengler became the most famous member of the band over singer Paul Banks or guitarist Daniel Kessler. His hip looks and hedonistic lifestyle attracted fan attention to “The Cult of Carlos D” — but eventually the fame wore off. In May of 2010, after the release of the band’s fourth album, Dengler announced his departure from the band with Paul Banks taking over bass duties.

Despite some fan concerns about Dengler’s departure, the band has kept its trademark sound intact while changing things up enough to keep them fresh. They announced their return in August with the single “All the Rage Back Home.” The song opens with a very spare arrangement, focusing on Banks’ voice and a high Kessler guitar line that more closely resembles bombastic fanfare than any rock riff. And then suddenly, the band cuts back into a fast-paced groove and doesn’t let go of the audience for another three minutes. And lyrically, the song resonates as one of the band’s best wrorks. All of the band’s communally written songs read like a game of two truths and a lie, a sort of cut-up style that produces more of a general emotion rather than a cohesive narrative. For example “and we went over again, my head about oh, the feeling” and “you want to leave my lady lovers of my eighteen summers alone” draw you deeper and deeper into their mysteries just for the refrain and title to remind you that no, you’re not going to get it that easily.

The rest of the album proves just as inscrutable — and thankfully, wonderful. Rather than stick too heavily to their primary style, they mix things up on a number of tracks. The second song, “Everything Is Wrong,”features a fuzzy guitar riff and falsetto vocals reminiscent of early Muse and proves to be the album’s strongest song. Album closer “Twice as Hard” opens up broadly into the closest thing to a power ballad that the band will ever release: slow, stately and with some unexpected string parts. The biggest divergence, however, occurs in the penultimate track, “Tidal Wave,” when the band whips out a whole body shaking  synthesizers and make the band’s most danceable track to date.

The band also delivers numbers in its classic style. One aspect of Turn on the Bright Lights that made the album so memorable was the song structure. The band never contents themselves with simple verse-chorus patterns. Rather, what appeared to be a conventional song at first shifts suddenly at around the three-minute mark into something almost antithetical to what preceded it: hard rock smashers like “PDA” open into pure weightlessness and mellow mood pieces like “The New” explode into massive anthems. Around half the tracks here contain this stylistic variety, like the aforementioned “All the Rage Back Home.” “Breaker 1” shifts back and forth between a brutal rock song and a mordant, almost theatrical ballad.

Despite Interpol lacking one of its founding members, El Pintor shows one of rock’s greatest modern bands returning to the sound that made them great.