turn on the bright lights
Tonight we saw Interpol at the Crystal Ballroom, and it rocked. They are their own sound, but still it was like seeing Joy Division. It's hard to avoid comparing them with Joy Division - they're like what would have happened if Joy Division had become The Toadies or Coldplay instead of New Order after Ian's suicide. The fact that the entire band was wearing ties, some of them suits, only served to reinforce the Manchester working grunt image, but these guys are pure NYC.
I read a review of Interpol's first EP right after it came out: "It sounds like the Ramones covering 'OK Computer'." Not a bad description, really... or this one, which is a bit thick but also pretty accurate: "an accident sprung from an attempt to combine goth and mod into a new space-age clarity-resistant polymer. Their gloomy drones and spring-loaded beats coalesced into a thoroughly varnished, gleaming corridor of black mirrors, where you could only see shadows of the band, their oblique lyrics and chain-link-fence-of-sound production sounding less like a rock group and more like some uncatchable entity of music."
Last week we saw Flogging Molly in the same venue; it was like seeing the Pogues, if they weren't too drunk to play their instruments and if the mellowest song they did was 'The Sickbed Of Cuchulainn'. (Last time we saw Shane MacGowan he was so drunk he just held on to the microphone stand to support himself, and didn't move from that position throughout the whole set, which he delivered in a monotone drawl from start to finish.) The place was really moving - actually moving, as the third-floor ballroom has a suspended floor and when you get a few hundred of the celt-core leather-and-tweed set jumping up and down it's like walking on a hardwood trampoline.
I read a review of Interpol's first EP right after it came out: "It sounds like the Ramones covering 'OK Computer'." Not a bad description, really... or this one, which is a bit thick but also pretty accurate: "an accident sprung from an attempt to combine goth and mod into a new space-age clarity-resistant polymer. Their gloomy drones and spring-loaded beats coalesced into a thoroughly varnished, gleaming corridor of black mirrors, where you could only see shadows of the band, their oblique lyrics and chain-link-fence-of-sound production sounding less like a rock group and more like some uncatchable entity of music."
Last week we saw Flogging Molly in the same venue; it was like seeing the Pogues, if they weren't too drunk to play their instruments and if the mellowest song they did was 'The Sickbed Of Cuchulainn'. (Last time we saw Shane MacGowan he was so drunk he just held on to the microphone stand to support himself, and didn't move from that position throughout the whole set, which he delivered in a monotone drawl from start to finish.) The place was really moving - actually moving, as the third-floor ballroom has a suspended floor and when you get a few hundred of the celt-core leather-and-tweed set jumping up and down it's like walking on a hardwood trampoline.
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