Interpol - Our Love to Admire

Not every band would kick off their third album with a slow, six-minute trudge characterised by descending guitar lines, mournful melodica, and a frontman that sounds not so much suicidal as already decaying. Interpol, however, have never been shy of basking in melancholy, and Our Love to Admire is an album that just exults in it. Newly bolstered by funereal keyboards, Our Love to Admire feels full and rich where previous Interpol albums sometimes felt gaunt and bony. The old themes remain, however: emptiness, dislocation, and a rather caddish attitude to romance, as encapsulated on "No I in Threesome" or the pounding, sarcastic "The Heinrich Maneuver", a sour kiss-off to an ex-lover that sees frontman Paul Banks asking "How are things on the West Coast?/ I hear you’re moving real fine" atop taut, stabbing bass. Further in, the band experiments with some more sprawling, elaborate song structures. The excellent "Mammoth" locks into a driving groove that’! s most uncharacteristic for Interpol, Daniel Kessler trying out riff after riff like he’s dressing for some important social occasion, while the climactic "The Lighthouse" is a bare wisp of ambient guitar that might be the band’s stateliest, grandest moment to date. -- Louis Pattison