Interpol - 'Our Love To Admire' (Parlophone) Released 09/07/07

Before beginning work on ‘Our Love To Admire’ Interpol found themselves in a peculiar position: label-less (their contract with indie Matador having expired), and with no touring commitments remaining (in comparison to their non-stop schedule that led into the release of 2004’s ‘Antics’), the magnificently miserly four-piece found themselves scattered across their native NYC for several weeks of recuperation and reflection. The effect on the band, as drummer Samuel Fogarino recently told Gigwise, was to place them in a position that felt akin to “a mature version of the pre-‘Bright Lights’ era, when we were playing music with an unknown future”.

The resultant work, the effect of returning to this blank slate, is by any measure the group’s boldest album yet. Where previous LP titles were sly digs at the not entirely misplaced assumption that Interpol were the dour, misanthropic types, so ‘Our Love To Admire’ shifts the immediate focus from ironic plays on Interpol’s overtly monochrome aesthetic to the thematic concerns the band, or more specifically sole lyricist Paul Banks, have always been masters at addressing: matters of the soul (“the soul” being a recurring issue here). They’re reclaiming such territory of romance, bitterness and the squalor of the city within which such dramas play out, as their own. Surprisingly it’s also the first album they have actually recorded within New York itself, despite always being inexorably associated with the place.

Opening with the six-minute slow-burner ‘Pioneer To The Falls’ is the record’s first masterstroke; it recalls the initial empty moments from ‘Turn On The Bright Lights’, except here the desolation is just so much richer, heavier and, well, expensive. The instruments all collide beautifully, each jagged rhythm finding space in an arrangement of almost-scientific brilliance. And the soaring guitar three minutes in, as Paul exclaims “You fly straight into my heart”, is possibly the best moment on the album. It’s a sumptuous texture that isn’t merely restricted to the first track, but proves to be one of the dominating features of the record.

Because alongside the change in title outlook and recording location, most significantly of all Interpol have for the first time drafted in an external producer, Rich Costey, to work with them on this third record. Famously deft at coaxing a streamlined and clinical sound out of bands without compromising their individuality or volume (as his work with Muse and The Mars Volta would suggest), here Costey’s input is tangible. However, on the likes of ‘No I In Threesome’ and ‘Mammoth’ this influence is perhaps a little too pronounced. Both are exceptionally busy productions, but where ‘The Heinrich Maneuver’ still sounds lithe even two months down the line, its’ disjointed guitar patterns and arena-sized urgency fulfilling the promise of the best moments from ‘Antics’, the aforementioned tracks, both appearing within ‘Our Love…’s first half, add up to less than the sum of their parts.