Interpol
-ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER-
New York City in 2002 and Interpol released their debut album, Turn on The Bright Lights. I wasn’t there. It’s hardly surprising considering I was eight at the time and over three thousand miles away. Say what you will about anniversary tours, but it gives fans like me a chance to see something we’d otherwise have missed. I’d put TOTBL in my all-time top 10 albums: this is a special occasion to me.
The queue to get into tonight’s show stretches all the way around the Albert Hall and extends back onto Deansgate. …Bright Lights may have captured the feeling of paranoia that saturated consciousness in the post-9/11 world, but the only paranoia within the queue right now is that those at the back are going to miss the first half of the show. Interpol come on half an hour late, partly down to the fact that they only arrived late to the venue, but I suspect also to make sure everyone got in.
There’s no mystery to the set list tonight: everyone present knows what they’re in for and that’s the reason tickets sold out almost immediately after going on sale. ‘Untitled’ greets the crowd like an old friend, with its teasing jangling guitars which Interpol have become synonymous for, until an all too familiar high-hat and release. The crowd nod along, wide-grinned in unison, until ‘Obstacle 1’ gives them the chance to sing back towards the stage. By the time the band are into ‘NYC’, there’s a full-grown man in front of me weeping to himself – how two chords can be so powerful is a testament to how moving these songs have become over time. ‘PDA’ ends off what must be one the best opening four tracks on an album.
Of all the great bands coming out New York at the beginning of the new millennium, Interpol were the moodiest, and they haven’t changed much. Dressed in their usual uniform of black suits, crowd interaction is minimal, just the occasional half smile and “thank you for coming” from Paul Banks.
‘Hands Away’ allows the crowd a moment of contemplation and small pockets of people embrace in the Albert Hall, before fan favourite ‘Obstacle 2’ has everyone in the building belting out the words again. ‘Stella Was a Diver and She’s Always Down’ is the highlight of the night. These guys aren’t just churning out old tunes for quick cash, they really mean it. After TOTBL finisher ‘Leif Erikson’, the crowd roar to show their appreciation. It does end up being rather premature as the band find time to squeeze b-side ‘The Specialist’ into the main set.
The encore is a victory lap which includes highlights from the rest of Interpol’s career, ‘Slow Hands’ and ‘Evil’ from Antics go down predictably well, but ‘The Heinrich Manoeuvre’ still sounds as great as ever. These hits aren’t the reason tonight’s show is so memorable though, seeing Interpol play Turn on The Bright Lights from start to finish has cemented it as a timeless album in my mind. I for one will be the first in the queue for tickets if they choose to do another anniversary show in five years’ time, and I’m sure I won’t be alone.
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When resisting the urge to put on the new Radiohead album for the one-billionth time, I try to keep my music listening as eclectic as possible.I was the clichéd skinny jeans & Strokes t-shirt clad indie kid in school clad and have never really grown out of that. Since starting university in 2012 I’ve got into lots of electronic, house, techno music and finding it very addicting. Favourites include Jon Hopkins, Todd Terje and Nicolas Jaar. Very recently I’ve been getting into old shoegaze bands like My Bloody Valentine, Ride & The Jesus and Mary Chain. I’ll have probably found something new by next week. Anything Thom Yorke puts his name to is one constant though.I’m a lover of CDs (probably because as a student I can’t quite afford vinyl) and my 250+ strong collection seems to be growing exponentially. If we discussed the pros and cons of physical music compared to streaming and how we consume music today, I could bore you for hours.Soup Kitchen is my spiritual home.I’ve pledged to take a review a month of an artist that I know nothing about, so sometimes I might sound like an idiot.
