Interpol - Our Love To Admire

four stars (out of five)

Interpol were a big discovery for me a few years back: brought back all that great post-punk stuff I'd loved and brought it bang up to date. When I found Antics and Turn On The Bright Lights there on eMusic I was v. happy. Then they went and signed to a major (EMI subsidiary) for this release. They've taken heat all over the place for that.

And yet... this is a really good record - mostly. The first four songs are as muscular, punchy and un-leaveable-alone as anything on their earlier stuff. Probably more Antics than TOTBL but that's not biggie either way. So presumably the hate mail is either backlash for 'going major'. Pah. It's the music that matters.

One note on that, btw: by going EMI we can still get this as MP3, not turgidly limited iTunes or WMA locked files. Happy with that... and have a feeling this will be a recurring theme on this blog over the coming posts.

I've read a few reviews that have talked up the last two tracks on the album - Wrecking Ball and The Lighthouse. At first glance these have been the weakest links for me. Will try and persevere with them. But when you consider the way the album starts, Pioneer To The Falls, No I In Threesome, Scale and The Heinrich Maneuver are almost as terrific a way to start an album as the way Wilco's maligned Sky Blue Sky starts off. More of which, I suspect, later.