The New-York band Interpol has posted on their website a new song, ‘Lights,’ to announce their upcoming fourth album. The mp3 is free and according to the band, the song is the first of several others that will be released in the next few months.
You can read this on their facebook page:
‘Hello everyone.
We’re stirring. Please take a moment and click below. We want to show you something. And make sure you come back soon. We will be posting important information and dates in the coming weeks.’
When you visit their website http://www.interpolnyc.com/ there is an animation made with the Interpol logo that is not without reminding you a Star Wars movie or some kind of space odyssey.
Interpol is an interesting band, because of their dark sound they have been compared ad nauseam to Joy division among other bands, and the resemblance is undeniable. I heard once Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols, who used to have a show here in LA on a now defunct radio, making fun of the tendency that bands have to borrow their sound from another one. He had noticed that She Wants Revenge (a local LA band) was imitating Interpol who was imitating Joy Division… a chain reaction or a lack of imagination?
Talking about imitation, someone has brought to my attention (hey I would not have found it myself) that the new Interpol song ‘Lights’ begins like the Killers song ‘All the pretty faces.’ I have checked and the first 20 seconds are effectively very similar, same guitar riff! You have to ask yourself if it is just a coincidence, but don’t try if you don’t want to spoil the song.
At the first listening, the song sounds really like Interpol, close to what they have done before but more atmospheric and spatial, that’s why the Interpol logo on their website fits very well with it. It takes a while to get into it because there is no real hook, but do all songs need a hook anyway? There is a slow built up, and it seems like a repetitive, circular song with a more and more menacing sound as the instruments are progressively added to the mix. It may reminds you ‘Wrecking Ball’ of their 2007 album ‘Our Love To Admire.’ The voice of Paul Banks still has that monotone dark tone, but progressively powerful at the end, and that may be a change!
I am definitively not sure what he is talking about in the song, but I listen to songs for different reasons, sometimes for their melody, sometimes mostly for their lyrics, but some songs are a different species, they leave you in a particular atmosphere that you want to come back to when you push the play button again, even if this atmosphere is hauntingly dangerous.