Finding the line for the Jimmy Kimmel Live show was like following a maze through the back streets and parking lots behind El Capitan theater where the show is recorded each weeknight. I expected to be waiting in front of the theater, on Hollywood boulevard, but it was not the case and I asked three times where I should go. I arrived at one point where I shouldn’t have been and was able to get a glimpse of Interpol rehearsing ‘Barricade’.
Actually we could hear them once on line, rehearsing the same song over and over, and hearing Paul Banks’ voice clear and high. A girl behind me screamed loudly ‘Woooowww, I love you’. It was a young crowd where black was the dominant color, a crowd made of dark-haired-high-heeled girls with bright red lipstick, and I felt a little bit out of place with my light blue t-shirt, puma shoes and jeans.
After a long wait we were allowed inside the parking lot, close to the large stage where we were able to watch on screen Jimmy Kimmel doing his thing inside the studio. The whole thing is a long wait, a wait on line outside, then a wait till the end of the show for the musical act to perform just a few songs.
The show has actually 2 publics, one for the inside, one for the outside, and when Interpol came on stage they let the inside crowd join us. All this seemed a little ‘fake’ as there was a guy trying to warm up the crowd before the band came, as if people who had been waiting on line for hours were just casual fans.
At last, Jimmy Kimmel announced them, the crowd yelled and that cold and spacey drum beat, that dark bass line, pursued by this obsessive pulsating guitar riff started ‘Barricade’, a song followed by ‘Summer Well’, and ‘Success’, from their new and self-titled album.
They also played one of their big hits, ‘The Heinrich Maneuver’, the one that starts with ‘How are things on the west coast/I hear you’re moving real fine’, which must be the obligatory song when they play in California.
When listening to the old songs (they finished up with ‘Not even jail’, from ‘Antics’), I got the feeling it will be difficult for Interpol to recapture the vivacity, the audacity of these songs. In the new ones, everything seems there, the darkness of the atmosphere, the emotionless-I-wish-I-was-Ian-Curtis voice, the tubular guitars, the pounding rhythms, and the impression of several melodies superposed to each other, but there is a lack of something on some of them, may be at the exception of ‘Barricade’.
For me Interpol has always sounded like a cold dominant-dominated relationship, something aggressive and dangerous but seductive at the same times, which finally ends up in emotional outbursts. Feelings born from chilliness, emotion born from apathy, and I have never really understood how this happens. But ‘Summer Well’ or ‘Success’ never seemed to reach that point, although the aesthetic signature of the band was still there.
There was a very serious security check point at the entrance, airport-style, but I was surprised to see many people with their iPhones taping the show!
Due to Bono’s surgery, Interpol, which was supposed to open for U2, had to cancel many of the shows. And that may have been the reason why there was a Bono look-a-like hanging out on the parking lot after the show. He was quite credible, but the sunglasses were probably a big part of it, and people, all excited, were taking pictures with him as he was doing a V sign. Disgusting!