Second Interpol Album Pronounced a Success

Oct. 7, 2004
By Braden Rapp
Staff Writer

As I began writing this review, I found myself spitting out the same things that I have been reading about Interpol for the past three years. Interpol’s first album was amazing. Yes, Paul Banks sounds like Ian Curtis, but Interpol is not a Joy Division rip-off.

Cryptic lyrics, urgent guitar lines, and unconventional song structure has garnered Interpol as one of the most prominent bands in Indie rock. All of these things have been said countless times but, regardless of their frequency, they still ring true.

Interpol’s debut album, “Turn on the Bright Lights”, is heralded as one of the best albums to come out in the past two years. Finding this kind of acclaim with just one album puts a tremendous amount of pressure on any artist to produce an equally compelling follow-up.
With “Antics”, I expected to find Interpol one of two places: a) creating “Turn on the Bright Lights” point deux, or b) on some ridiculously unfitting experimental tangent. Thankfully, neither came to pass.

Antics opens with “Next Exit”, which feels more like a lead-in to “Evil”, than a fully realized song. This, however, is not a problem as “Evil” is one of “Antics”’ strongest tracks. Paul Banks weaves his words around the stop and start rhythm of the drums and bass in typical Interpol fashion.

This time around, Paul Banks’ lyrics are much more blunt. Lines like, “You make me want to pick up a guitar and celebrate the myriad of ways that I love you,” seem overly obvious. This takes away form the mystery that was injected into their previous songs. Though, there aren’t any lines as strangely out of place as, “Let’s see about this ham.”

Fortunately, Interpol is a great band. All of the songs are wonderfully driving and laced with enough interesting moments that it doesn’t feel like a rehashing of their first LP. It does, however, lack the cohesiveness that made “Turn on the Bright Lights” such an intriguing listen.

This is the only place “Antics” falls a bit short. It never quite hits the listener as hard as “Turn on the Bright Lights”. This fact can be overlooked when the quality of the material is taken into consideration. For a sophomore album, this is quite good.

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