(t5!) Heroes Of The Zeroes Albums: #02: Interpol – Turn On The Bright Lights (2002)

Interpol sure didn’t make it easy for themselves when they were coming out of the gates in 2002. I mentioned already that it took me a while to get into it. But to a lot of people, it wasn’t about the music, per se. Everything that surrounds them made them a band that begged to be hated: from their dependency on post-punk pioneers of the past, to their affiliations with Matador, to their debonair fashion sense, to their angular haircuts. Even their New York counterparts, The Strokes, had affable personalities. And then, there’s the hype. People hate hyped guys. I think it’s because everyone hates being told what to like. Yep, the four boys of Interpol, like Phil Collins, are against all odds. It’s a good thing, then, that they released one of the best albums ever (the second best album of the decade, in fact). Turn On The Bright Lights is a triumph of unfading musicianship that integrate the finest their brooding forefathers had to offer with modern rock concept. Naysayers who call them out for biting are just not listening as intently as they should.


The album is exceptional in so many ways. It’s discernibly derivative, but with a fresh spin. It’s a sound you’ve heard before, but it’s also a sound that exudes something current. There are great moments in Turn On The Bright Lights: spirals of single-note guitar echoes on top of thumping, faux-disco bass; Joy Division staccato with guitar interplay with a little shoegazer thrown in for good measure. Paul Banks has a yearning in his voice, but it never trembles, and his baritone chant rides victorious on top of every note and every smack at the drum kit. Painfully familiar, for sure. But when’s the last time you heard it sound this good? Not for a while, right?

Turn On The Bright Lights is one of those achingly cool records that evoke hopelessness, dejection, and despondency, the type where every note is firm, dry, and brittle, where the lead singer’s voice is pushed way up front, and gives you that mental picture of what was going on. If you’ve been to an Interpol show, you’ve watched the band’s new wave haircut flopped over their faces as they hunched over on their instruments. You can see the seriousness and anguish on their faces, because they need to successfully convey the mood of their masterpiece. The incessant sharp drilling on “Obstacle 1” matches Banks’ forced, confident-but-agitated “she can’t read, she can’t read” with a deep sonic assault, mirroring his pain.

What lingers on after multiple listens was the bass. Carlos D has his post-punk fashion, and over-dramatic on=stage shenanigans, but he also has command of his instrument. He must love Peter Hook, like so many of us do, with all those two-note melodies. The bottom end rides conqueringly along every song, nearly pushing the other guitars out of the picture, battling the supremacy in the band. However, the battle between this crystal clear and superlative bass work and precise guitar give-and-take is what makes this album astonishing. It’s such a kaleidoscopic variety of tones.

Interpol arrived on the scene in the summer of 2002 with so much ballyhoo and rapturous acclaim that it’s damn near impossible to duplicate it the second time around. They tried their hardest to match Turn On The Bright Lights with their sophomore gift, Antics, but ultimately fell short. They made another crack at it with Our Love To Admire, but fell even shorter. But I don’t know if the disappointing follow-ups tainted the way people came to view their debut. If anything, Interpol makes more sense as a one-album wonder. In fact, I hope their reputation only continues to diminish over the years, to the point where an eager musical treasure hunter thirty years from now come across Turn On The Bright Lights on a thoughtless whim, the way I would come across a Television or a This Heat album, and get blown away. Maybe he’d even conjure a comparison between Interpol and an up-and-coming band in 2040.