Five albums in, what more can we expect of Interpol, the band from NYC who borrowed a little of UK shoegaze and a lot of UK post-punk, filtered it through the college indie-rock of REM, and became America's post-9/11 doom merchants of choice? Their self-titled fourth album from 2010 was a career low point and this follow-up, while translating from Spanish as The Painter, is of course an anagram of their own name. Same elements, then, but in a different order?
Not quite. While El Pintor does cherrypick the best bits from past Interpol records, it also attacks them with more energy than we've heard since their peak in the early 2000s.
Once or twice Paul Banks even leaves the safe ground of his gloomy matt-finish vocals for a bit of falsetto, while drummer Sam Fogarino is in more propulsive mode (especially on opening duo All The Rage Back Home and My Desire) and guitarist Daniel Kessler occasionally fashions spiky high-fret riffs that lift the sound out of the shadows (the spiral loop circling above Same Town, New Story being a case in point).
Not a sign of progression then, but a stronger set of tunes than we've had for a while and the sense that there's substance back beneath the style.
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