Interpol: 'Our Love To Admire'

It’s crunch time for Interpol. After the break-out success of 2004’s Antics - the sophomore album that scored the band a gold disc, a place on the Six Feet Under soundtrack and, thanks to their Dylan-esque touring schedule, one hell of a carbon footprint - the post-punkers have signed to major label Parlophone for their follow-up. What’s more, the New York City band has been beset by rumours of musical differences – drummer Sam Fogarino has recently formed a spin-off band and bassist Carlos D has confessed an unlikely passion for symphony orchestras. Just as the stakes have been raised, it seems, Interpol are on the verge of imploding.

But, against all reason, the trouble with Our Love To Admire is that it sounds too unified. Even after repeated listens, you’d be hard pushed to guess the name of any song on the album from a 20-second snippet. Aside from the tremulous ‘Lighthouse’, which sounds a bit like Joy Division performing the theme to a spaghetti western, there’s a lack of musical light and shade here. Producer Chris Costey, who recently helped Muse to leap gleefully into supermassive black holes, has boosted Interpol’s muscle power, but failed entirely to combat the band’s overdependence on dense, multi-layered soundscapes.

Nevertheless, there’s a lot to be said for the sheer rock power that Our Love To Admire frequently offers. ‘Mammoth’, with its raging drums and ominous, Spector-on-crack bells, is just begging for a place on the soundtrack to one of those US arthouse flicks about drug-induced nervous breakdowns, while ‘No I In Threesome’ captures the same sense of epic wonder as recent Killers singles. Best of all is ‘All Fired Up’, which rides its insistent, slightly off-kilter guitar riff to the best chorus of Interpol’s career.

Sadly, the band's strike rate doesn’t quite live up to its vaulting ambition. Lead single ‘Heinrich Maneuver’ benefits from sprightly beat, a bright, major key chorus and frontman Paul Banks’ catchy refrain of “How are things on the west coast?”, but lacks the propulsive thwack that its title promises. Honestly, if you began to choke at an upmarket eatery – and the members of Interpol were the only diners there to help you – on this evidence you’d be left to turn blue with a lump of grizzled steak lodged atop your oesophagus. Worse still, songs like ‘Scale’ and ‘Pace Is The Trick’ fail to marry their fiery emotional intensity – provided by Banks’ impassioned vocals - with anything resembling a hook.

Our Love To Admire is, for the most part, a rampaging, powerful and affecting rock album. But someone needs to tell Interpol that, just as the refreshing zestiness of a margarita is intensified by the sharpness of the salt dusted around the rim of the glass, the power of brooding emotion can actually be amplified by an occasional burst of light relief.