This isn’t really a radical idea;
it’s just one that hasn’t gotten much play lately. Interpol’s
Turn On the Bright Lights sounds like the work of a bunch
of guys who are pretty certain that they’re the people who came
up with it in the first place, and that’s what makes it exciting.
If anything, the best point of comparison is Big Black: like Big Black,
Interpol aren’t exactly breaking new ground musically (the Sisters
of Mercy had thoroughly examined the guitar/bass/voice/drum machine
setup a couple of years earlier) or lyrically (Big Black introduced
comic misanthropy to a generation, but they can hardly be said to
have singlehandedly discovered it). What gave Big Black the sheen
of brilliance was their utter conviction in their own project: the
way it seemed that even if they hadn’t cut their routine
from whole cloth, they would have been able to do so had the need
presented itself. It was their undying faith in the excellence of
the machine they’d built, if you follow me. Like any good salesman,
they believed in their product, and if you spent any time with them
watching their product work, you came to believe in it yourself. |
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