Release Date: September 7th, 2010
Genre: Alternative, Shoegaze
Label: Matador
MySpace: www.myspace.com/interpol 

The first thing that strikes me about Interpol as a band, is that, over their whole career, (the course of four albums) they’ve done an incredible job of crafting a sound where a listener can instantly hear a song and say, “yep, that’s Interpol”. Now whether this is a good thing or not is determined by whether they’ve been able to keep the sound fresh and interesting along the way. Their admiration for shoegaze sounds and the pulsing, heavy-hearted beats they carry throughout the album are all pieces of the puzzle that makes up Interpol’s passive-aggressive, defeated, downtrodden mood.And if there’s one thing that impresses me about this record, it’s the mood that it provokes. Interpol’s often had the right mixture of lyrical meaning, delivery, and instrumentation to give off the right feeling, but on Interpol they take it to a whole new level with a truly impressive flow of lyrics that carry through the whole record, giving off an arch of emotions leading from cautiously hopeful in the beginning, to defeated and helpless at the end. It’s a depressing prospect, but Interpol delivers the tale with such vigor and passion that you can’t help but be impressed by their collaborative sadness.
On the opening few tracks, (“Success”, “Memory Serves” & “Summer Well”) these feelings and emotions are fairly obvious, but it’s when the album hits just about mid-way with the tracks “Lights” and “Barricade” that imagery of failure and hopeless are provoked with a sharp lonesome guitar in “Lights” and a never ending chant of separation on “Barricade”. It’s here when Interpol comes back to their bleak, hollow sound that has sort of followed them since their critically acclaimed first release Turn On The Bright Lights, a sound that I’m sure many have noticed is influenced heavily by bands like Joy Division.

If there’s one thing that’s the most apparent on Interpol in terms of change from the last few releases, it’s the structuring that they’ve implemented with most of the songs. There’s a very powerful new style of just endless building on most tracks here, and considering the mood that Interpol uses, I think it works perfectly. Their repetition of lyrics and the relentless drumming all builds into this single goal that Interpol is striving for. It’s like a building of emotions, a building of rage, sadness, and depression. The whole process is really something to behold, and by the end of the record everything will have left an imprint on how your view the album as a whole. This repetitious nature may turn off a lot of listeners, but looking past that just letting the album happen is very rewarding. It’s a story, but lacking the happy ending, which is a breath of fresh air, but possibly a bit of a disappointment for some who are overly familiar with Interpol’s previous work.

Instrumentation on the record certainly serves this idea of building. It shows up in the form of lots of horns, strings, and some nice tremolo picking on tracks like (“Memory Serves”, “Always Malaise (The Man I Am)” & “Try It On”). The guitars are heavily reverbed, and I like this, as I’ve always felt as though sadness and solitude should be accompanied by echoes, which Paul Banks applies to his vocals with beautiful payoff.

If there’s one thing that you’re going to remember Interpol for, it’s for a beautifully morose mood that the band can create within the space of an album, and the relentless building of songs into a wall of sound that assaults both your ears and your emotions. I seriously recommend picking up this album and tasting something different.