Our Love to Admire

Representatives of New York indie scene

Moving to a major label is undoubtedly a very important step in the career of any band. Numerous examples prove that it affects material, sound and popularity in extremely positive way and in fact serves as a peculiar acceptance of the band's talents in the highest ranks of musical industry. So when a young band reveals about upcoming first major release it means that most likely this album won't be disappointing. Of course one can't call American indie band Interpol a young group – their discography already contains two full-fledged and pretty famous albums – but their new album Our Love To Admire is the first record released on major label, therefore one should expect only positive results from it. At present Interpol are commonly associated with New York scene and enjoy an enviable reputation among other American indie rockers. The band's debut album Turn In The Bright Lights is widely considered as one of the best indie albums of 2002 and it made Interpol famous among numerous post punk fans. The second album Antics became even more popular due to lighter and more accessible arrangements and the support tour stretched on for almost 18 months, which let Interpol enter British charts. And their new record opens new opportunities for the band. Our Love To Admire will surely attract new echelons of fans without loosing old ones. The band still sticks to their old stylistic but at the same time brings some new attractive novelty.

Interpol develop their style

Our Love To Admire definitely sounds more commercial than both of their previous records taken together. Actually this tendency was mapped on Interpol's second album so those who are familiar with the band's creative works may picture how it could reflect on the new record quite precisely. The sound is more qualitative, the arrangements are more accessible and generally speaking the music as such is more comprehensible. But still this doesn't mean that Interpol sold out and suddenly began playing pop rock. The stylistic of their songs is the same they’ve simply changed the way of presentation and improved overall quality. Speaking in popular terms the band plays slightly dark and mystic post punk with a strong emphasis on the music's atmosphere. The album's huge advantage is an enviable diversity of the songs; they do not evoke a feeling that the musicians repeat their own ideas. And this is by the way is quite a knotty problem to cope with for an album where all the songs possess identical dark coloring of atmosphere. A high songwriting level of musicians is undeniable. You start liking this album after a first listen already.

Our Love To Admire is the best album of Interpol to date

The voice of the band's singer Paul Banks deserves separate mentioning. His timbre and indifferent performing manner possess some sort of bewitching and even hypnotic qualities. He is definitely the main driving force of both the album and the band. Listen to the first track Pioneer To The Falls and you'll understand what this was supposed to mean at once. Slow pace of the song's tempo and weird arrangement create a pretty unusual halo and it is hard to say where it is leading at first, but as soon as the vocal enters everything comes to its place and each instrument starts playing its own role within the composition. The Scale is done in approximately the same slowly enshrouding vein and the melodies again strike you with their uncommonness. However, Interpol do not strive to be dark and mystic in everything, there are major-chords songs too on the album. Yet they could be cheerful only in theory, if some other band played them. No I Threesome and The Heinrich Maneuver are the best examples of up-tempo songs. The production of Our Love To Admire is also quite unusual. Guitars sound sharply, brightly and a little bit dirty, an important role is assigned to bass, the post-punk energy of the album mostly depends upon this instrument, the studio effects are frequently used with vocals and guitars. Add massive sound of keyboards and you'll get a rough picture of how huge and mysterious the band sounds. The album has its own, pronounced character. This is gothic indie rock, which is supposed to attract attention by means of the true values of the genre but not by flirting with mainstream. As an indie rock album Our Love To Admire sounds interesting, unique and qualitative, this is definitely the best record of Interpol to date.