1) Untitled; 2) Obstacle 1; 3) NYC; 4) PDA; 5) Say Hello to the Angels; 6) Hands Away; 7) Obstacle 2; 8) Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down; 9) Roland; 10) The New; 11) Leif Erikson
Not quite the classic as it's grown in reputation, but damn if the band don't sound incredible here.
Key tracks: "Obstacle 1", "NYC", "Say Hello to the Angels"
Turn On the Bright Lights is not about the brains or the heart, but about the muscle.
I can't say I've ever been particularly overwhelmed by emotion when listening to Interpol; there's been songs that rush me over with a particular gravitas, but they are decidedly not a band that resonate with me on an emotional level. Nor do they get my brain a-sparkling with particularly cunning arrangements, lyrical wisdom or conceptual wit. What they are is band so strong on an instrumental level that just hearing them play a lean mean rock song with that signature groove is more than enough to get the superlatives going.
Turn On the Bright Lights is Interpol's first but everything is already in place and perfected. Carlos Dengler's bass is famous in its own right - there are some mixed accounts on how much he was personally responsible for the riffs during his time in the band, but in the end it's he who plays them. His fluid but aggressive riffs are like a shark swimming in the depths, underneath the rest of the band, shifting the dynamics of the songs with the changes in their grooves. Sam Fogarino's drums are the heart and the cardiovascular system of the record, his incredibly precise but brutishly strong beat work giving the album the urgency it rides on. Daniel Kessler's textural guitar work can be classic rock riffs or they can be echoing walls of sound, but they fill the gaps where the rhythm section can't go: they're what bring on the 3am lost-in-the-urban-jungle atmospherics that the album soaks in. And for all the redundant comparisons and short sticks that people throw in Paul Banks' way, his deep voice - less singing and more simply bellowing nonsense imagery into existence - is nothing but a perfect fit for the sound of the record; as another stark instrument among the others.
Turn On the Bright Lights is all about its instrumental prowess for me. If I get lost in it, it's because I'm obsessively keeping my ear out for the details in the interplay between the instruments and the deft fills in Fogarino's drums and Dengler's bass. When I get excited about it, it's because of the sheer power that musicianship packs in its loudest and vivid songs. Should I get emotional when any of its songs play, it's not because of non-sequiturs like "her stories are boring and stuff" or "subway is a porno" (though I genuinely appreciate Banks' desert-dry sense of humour) but because something happening through the actual instruments triggers some ancient lizard part of my brain where everything suddenly hits like a thousand volts. I am not an instruments nerd by nature, I can't even remember the make of my own bass, but I absolutely obsess over everything happening on this record.
But some credit goes to the mood, and the songwriting as well. That cold, isolated atmosphere that's drenched all over the album - lonely and caught in a blizzard in the middle of New York City - is the closest thing the record comes to an evocative voice that gives the album a little soul within its steadily-beating heart. The early 00s New York scene was as much about being impossibly cool as it was about the creeping dark center hidden beneath (and how cool it was to brood about it), and Turn On the Bright Lights displays both perfectly. The songs are for the most part great too, and the initial five-song run is a flawless setlist that dreams are built on. The impossibly gorgeous opener "Untitled", the legendary "Obstacle 1" that has a clear spot in the all-time great indie songs list and a shoe-in for the 2000s top ten with that bass and that pre-chorus build-up bridge and those chorus beat switches, the haunted desperation of "NYC" where that gravitas the band can sometimes display comes in on the hardest (shout-out to Fogarino's tactical cymbal strikes in the verses, which I love), and the prowling nocturnal beasts of rock 'n' roll of "PDA" and "Say Hello to the Angels" are somewhere between indie disco dancefloor fillers and ecstatic mosh pit anthems. Turn Out the Bright Lights and Interpol in general are a lot about the force in their music, but the punches act as hooks too and there's a lot of melody intertwined into the rhythmic runs, filtered guitars and Banks' affectations. It's what gives the songs life beyond their pure energy.
I'm shaving some points off because Turn On the Bright Lights starts fizzling out by it end, with "The New" and "Leif Erikson" being a particularly forgettable duo to close off what is otherwise a very impressive record. The second half is still strong and "Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down" is a particular favourite of mine, but there's a clear gap between the first five-six songs and then the rest. It's not a shocker that a band couldn't pull out songs as strong as those for an entire record, especially on their first go-around, but frontloading them rather than pacing things better ends up doing them a disservice. It's still a great album though - not sure I'd call it my favourite Interpol record or title it the classic it's been crowned as, but when it's going full steam ahead, it absolutely sounds like it should be one.
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