Interpol – Our Love to Admire review
Interpol is rock’s greatest hidden treasure. A band that displayed an astounding level of musical maturity right out of the gate on their debut (Turn On the Bright Lights) and follow-up (Antics), Interpol will manage to astound listeners once again with their latest album. Our Love to Admire finds a band that has achieved oneness with every aspect of music production;
1. Paul Bank’s voice – still perfectly distinct and now improved with nuances and high notes that markedly expands the admittedly limited emotional dimensions to past Interpol songs.
2. Instruments – the bass line inspires delirium, but the percussion grounds you. The guitars leads confidently until Paul Banks enters the scene where it becomes a competent second in command.
3. Atmosphere – dripping wet with atmosphere on the opener track (Pioneer to the falls) and the closer (Lighthouse) and sprinkled throughout the album with faint keyboards, wailing guitars and bass drums.
4. variety – each songs does what it aspires to do. You will feel the anguish, despair, hopelessness, anger, passion and other emotion when the song demands it. Slow tracks that don’t feel like a drudgery, hard rock songs that pound like a monster, catchy as hell sections on every song, and absolutely no filler.
5. Layered – Like all great albums, you will need to peel off layers and layers of listening until the album unravels its qualities. This album’s resistance to the law of diminishing returns doesn’t disappoint.
6. Lyrics – Interpol always puts emphasis on the lyrics as much as their melodies, theirs’ are symbolic but not to the point of abstract, and on some songs, lyrics are rather straight forward. This makes the songs more real as compared to bands that follow a lyrical ambiguous template.
7. The song arrangement – the first song on their every album always serves as a summary of the album, the loose concept, followed by the early singles, and with more powerful songs in the middle, the highlights comes after to elevate the listeners to aural heaven and the more melodic ones in the later part serves to gently put your feet back to the ground.
Like traits of other great geniuses, Interpol is meticulous on their music even on their live sets and their aversion to the press shows that they are true musicians that will consciously evolve themselves to attain musical greatness. This album shows just that. Masterful, intelligent, accessible and profound and a distinct progression from their already excellent past albums, Our Love to Admire propels Interpol from one of rock’s hidden gem to one of its greatest treasures.
Highly Recommended
BEST SONGS: Wrecking Ball, Pace is the Trick, Theres no I in Threesome, Rest My Chemistry
