Despite its title, Interpol's 2002 debut Turn on the Bright Lights was marked by its seductive shadowiness. The product of a bygone New York City filled with dank alleys and smoke-choked dives, Interpol fed on their own mystery while translating cool kid record collections into sexy downtown paranoia. They received a few positive notices, too. In the glowing Pitchfork review of the LP, Eric Carr wrote, "Although it's no Closer or OK Computer, it's not unthinkable that this band might aspire to such heights." And now-- after the tight, familiar turns of 2004's Antics and a major label deal-- their lofty aspirations are finally kicking in.
Horns, extended outros, strings, an oboe, and album art featuring more than three colors-- welcome to the new world of Interpol. Our Love to Admire is the sound of a minted Madison Square Garden band seeking to freshen its damp atmospherics. It's not a terrible idea: On Antics, even Interpol seemed tired of Interpol, capping the disc's 10 tracks with a couple drawn-out duds. But, as anyone who's bought laundry detergent knows, "new and improved" does not always mean "new" or "improved." Admire's predictable adornments quickly prove fleeting and expose Interpol's nagging limitations rather than their potential.
With cleaner production and an arsenal of instruments at their disposal, the group indulges, and the songs often suffer. Tracks like six-minute opener "Pioneer to the Falls" and the limp lowlight "Scale" grate due to overly repetitive song structures that rely too heavily on choppy breakdowns and pointless solos. And the band's previously economical songwriting, built on quick, bursting hooks and seamless transitions, is now grand, stately, and bloated-- more like a depressing U2 than a poppy Joy Division.
While it would be easy (and probably accurate) to blame Admire's flaws on the group's heightened commercial ambitions, that's only part of the problem. With their first two LPs, Interpol vaulted over like-minded contemporaries thanks to their superior interplay between rhythm and melody. Instead of letting Banks and guitarist Daniel Kessler dominate songs with their trebly timbres, bassist Carlos D. and drummer Sam Fogarino provided perfect complements, at times overshadowing their bandmates altogether. (Just listen to the loping low-end of "Untitled" or the stutter-step snares on "Evil" for proof.) But Admire finds the band's balance shifting significantly; the rhythm players often seem more like glorified session men than integral components of a sleek post-punk machine. Gone are the death-disco grooves that made "Slow Hands" and "Obstacle 1" strangely danceable, and without those dynamic rhythmic counterpoints, the tempos slacken, songs drag, and the focus inevitably turns to Banks' increasingly frustrating word splatters.
Banks has always been a between-the-lines lyricist-- his default is somewhere between opaque and lazy free association. With each new song, though, it becomes less certain that there was ever anything worth searching for between the lines in the first place. On Admire, he's slightly more overt, but this time his gripes with the opposite sex sometimes take on a surreal 80s rock star quality. "No I in Threesome", ostensibly about convincing a girlfriend to invite her friend into bed, is either a hilarious parody of an embarrassingly self-serious Paul Banks song-- or just an embarrassingly self-serious ménage a blah. (It's not both.) "The Heinrich Maneuver" rails against a cold-hearted, phony, manipulative actress (shocking!) and "Rest My Chemistry" has the singer grappling with an eternal query: Can you ever be too worn out on drugs to have sex with a young groupie? (A young groupie subject to head-smacking lines like, "You look so young like a daisy in my lazy eye," no less.) More than ever, Banks tries to add some sympathy to his reedy robot croon and nearly succeeds on the wistful "Wrecking Ball". Still, when he monotones, "I've got this soul, it's all fired up," he sounds as thrilled as a sleepy Stephen Hawking.
On "Threesome", Banks suggests, "It's time we give something new a try." And his quest for a guilt-free three-way is as doomed as Interpol's dalliances with heavy-handed, big-budget gestures on Admire. Can they make an OK Computer or Closer? At this point, another Antics would suffice.
