Alienation, ennui and romance: Interpol’s music has always conjured images that are more about New York’s mythology than its reality
I am lying on the sand at Sydney’s Cobblers beach in the early 00s, half-asleep in the sun. A friend hands me her Discman and says, “Listen to this band. The guy keeps singing about streetlights and girls, but in a good way. And apparently everything is about New York.”
The CD was Interpol’s Turn on The Bright Lights, a post-punk album throbbing with inspiration from Joy Division and the Psychedelic Furs. From the opening of reverb-soaked guitars on Untitled, I was transported to a world far from my sunny outlook – the New York night. I had passed through the looking glass into a noirish atmosphere of alienation and ennui. But among the bleak textures there was also a sense of romance, conjured by the lush production and Paul Banks’s haunting vocal style. I was able to form images of New York that belonged more to a mythology of the city than any real experience.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2Vtb3nt
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