(it should be noted that I’m about to write about Interpol without making the seemingly-obligatory mention of Joy Division, etc. If you really, really need it to be stated that Interpol’s tricks are borrowed and nicked from a handful of Factory, and other, bands’ antics…well, then, like Bryan Ferry, I could talk talk talk talk talk myself to death. Plus, you probably still listen to Gnarls Barkley.)

I wonder if I’m the only one who listens to the new Interpol album, Our Love To Admire, , and instead of hearing what it is, hears what it could have been.

I have a very special sort of love for Interpol’s debut album, Turn On The Bright Lights. It’s the sort of record that I’ll never intentionally put on, really-but, say, if I hear one of the songs out somewhere, or if iTunes decides to be sadistic, I’m forced to dim the lights, close my eyes, and leave awareness for the entirety of the album…which, to me, sounds like one long song, with a handful of build-ups, letdowns and breaks. It’s an every-so-often love affair of a song cycle that rips at the very depths in which it echoes.

Their second album, Antics, gets more regular play from me, mostly because it’s good but not great, a collection of songs but not the album that its’ predecessor is.

Now, with Our Love To Admire, I had high hopes. And, as a whole, the infamously-New York black suits put together an album that sounds very much like Interpol, enough so that those whose appreciation for, or knowledge of, the music consisted solely of the singles the cool kids were into for a minute (”PDA”, “Slow Hands”) would dismiss the entire affair with barely a listen as “exactly the same”…and that’s not true, or fair.

Let’s get the most obvious and important difference between Interpol v.3 and any other year’s model out of the way:

Carlos D now is no longer a vampire. He’s now your Uncle Charlie D. Lite, professional jazzamatazz:

As far as the sound of Interpol on this album, it’s a conflicting, confounding, very very rarely enamoring but all-too-often frustrating and stifled conflation of their previous two albums.

(Again, if you can’t tell the difference between the two, I don’t know what I can do to help you out here, brah.)

With the first song, “Pioneer To The Falls”Our Love To Admire jumps immediately into the sort of long, droning tonepoem that, for those of us who love such things, causes eyes to roll back and heads to fall into heads, accompanied by deep, long sighs.

Interpol: Pioneer To The Falls

I think it’s the middle that does it-Paul’s monotone plea, barely stating “here comes the fall” before the song becomes, dare I say it, enraptured, those Edge guitars (don’t deny it) come in, and then the song briefly makes it through a sunny patch before it starts raining, again. Sunrain into a cloudy night-that’s what Interpol’s always done well, and “Pioneer To The Falls” is one of the strongest album openers they’ve yet done.

The second song, “No I in Threesome”, may suffer from the worst song title ever but continues to prove that, as was once written, Interpol’s the only band to ever be influenced by the lyrics of Duran Duran. As always, the guys are razor-sharp in the dark, continuing the “three souls” theme from “Pioneer” and pulling back the red velvet curtain to reveal what all that hypnotic beauty was for:

“babe, it’s time
we give something new a try
oh, alone we may fight
so just let us be three”

Interpol: No I In Threesome

And I’ll be damned if it isn’t one of the most gorgeous, heartfelt pleas to catch some strange ever put to tape. Only Interpol could pull this kind of shit off and make everything all the better, senses all the more heightened, for it.

But then…they lose grip. Or track. Or focus. Or maybe, just maybe, they’ve decided they really want to be the indie dance rock party band they’ve always been mistakenly labeled for. Regardless of the motivation, the middle of Our Love To Admire begins to slip into half-cocked, and even worse, half-hearted quickies, conceptual ideas that are little more than a few riffs to make the kids dance with a few “creepy dude at the end of the bar” lyrics thrown in for good (and status quo) measure. “Scale” is entirely unneeded. Debut single “The Heinrich Maneuver” would be served by allowing the percussion to go into the stutter-step direction it desires, instead of restraining the entire tune into an unfortunate attempt to take Bloc Party’s place in the hipster’s hips. “Mammoth” starts off all right, but falls into that rote repetition that Interpol always borders on-this time, however, rather than building to something, they get in, stomp around for a minute, and leave a trail of dust. Nothing really worth remarking upon.

There are a few surprises here, though: “Pace Is The Trick”’s chorus is a remarkable uplift of soaring highs, the tongue-in-cheek juxtaposition of “All Fired Up” with “Rest My Chemistry” (only the latter is actually a genuinely good tune), the barely-there closing of “Lighthouse”. Mostly, though, there’s too much drab graytone filler instead of the sharp contrasts of dark black that have made Interpol’s previous albums so stately, so…so good. On a whole, it sounds as though they spent a bit too much time listening to the kids on Oh No They Didn’t proclaiming them boring, and so, rather than allowing songs to build, they push them out here half-formed.

The biggest exception to the rule is the penultimate track here, “Wrecking Ball”. After diving headfirst into an echoing, goth-y ballad, the entire song disappears, and you think you’ve heard this trick before. Your ears and mind are sure, as you can barely hear Carlos D.’s touched by the hand of Hooky bassline, that any minute the song will return, with Paul’s chorus of “I’m inside/like a wrecking ball through your eyes” repeating to fade. And you’re partially right-the whole thing comes back with a vengeance, but Paul’s barely there, buried under the thematic wrecking ball of the darkened mine shaft that is the song’s explosive, instrumental closing.

Interpol: Wrecking Ball

It’s impossible, really, to fall in love with “Wrecking Ball” and then not hear the trite, trivial bounce of songs like “Heinrich”. Paul himself nails his band’s new issue on the head when, on “Mammoth”, he sings “spare me the suspense”. With that as a working m.o. for Our Love To Admire, Interpol have shed the mystery that once made them shimmer and are now are just these guys, ya know?

Bonus Vid:

Interpol, Heinrich Maneuver