Rising like heat from a steaming sewer or a barrel of fire leaking an ashy cloud of smoke, a Gotham-esque mystique of hipper-than-thou pretension hangs over New York City's sparkling music scene for one reason: No other city's bands try so hard to emit an aura of coolness.
A generation has been engrained with an iconoclastic image of a drugged Lou Reed wearing sunglasses in a pitch-black CBGB, his back spitefully turned toward the audience as he utters each insinuating lyric in a disinterested, off key warble.
Forming a band that attempts to summon the exceedingly sensitive, gentle acoustic folk of Nick Drake or the sloppy, rolled-out-of-bed rock of the Replacements, seems inane faced with the exclusive cult of television or the New York City Dolls.
The NYC renaissance reaps the rewards of this anomalous perversion, delivering a barrage of classically sleek bands, both aesthetically attractive (designer ensembles, stylishly messy hair) and seductively alluring in their primordial New York "garage" (to use the painfully exploited term) sound.
The city's acoustic brand emphasizes the deft shift of rhythm, straightforward, entrancing guitars and basic but hammering drums.
Alternating between a restrained spunk that tries to hide behind a somber fa
ade and sober meditations that craft deep grooves for the self-pity to incubate in, The Walkmen, Liars, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Strokes have merged an image and modish musical style that, originality aside, lend them an indie credibility before they even prove themselves.
And just as the original scene's founders eventually turned an eye over the Atlantic in search of a muse, hipsters not old enough to remember Ian Curtis' self-booked exit have nonetheless begun to plunder England's shores.
Clad in tres chic leather jackets and a round of permanent scowls, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club unveiled a devout love for Jesus and the Mary Chain last year and created an album that sounded exactly like Jesus and the Mary Chain.
As BRMC lies beaten in the gutter, choking on the dust of its envious attempts to resurrect and assume their British hero's creations, Interpol languorously slides out from yet another fog of NYC coolness and affectation with "Turn On the Bright Lights," an album summoning a myriad of conflicting rejoinders.
Interpol builds a wall of pomposity, each brick making it harder to accept the band: their adorably retro, painfully contrived skinny ties and suits; their callous contempt of audiences while opening for Clinic this summer; their inanely hip insistence that the album was recorded in an abandoned mental hospital for children.
If only most of "Turn On the Bright Light" weren't so blisteringly good.
Where BRMC raped a Mary Chain fetish, Interpol fosters adoration for Joy Division, but this love comes fully endowed with an understanding of how to channel the band's mettlesome delivery and jangling rhythms, while also achieving depth in a field dense in a passionate swirl of guitars.
On "Turn On the Bright Lights" Interpol displays a faultless sense of control, an ability to pile layer upon layer of hypnotic riffs and execute tonal shifts that appear from nowhere, only to drop out as soon as listeners have grown comfortable.
A sense of unpredictability and giddy excitement fill each song to the point of implosion, as on "Say Hello to Angels" where the rumbling drones of guitars bursts into an explosion of Johnny Marr bounciness before lurking back into a cathartic cerebration.
The band tears through "Roland" and "Obstacle 1" with Sam Fogarino propulsively pounding away in a fluid, mercurial madness and Paul Banks singing with a mirrored intensity, warning not to "go stabbing yourself in the neck" in a bit of brutal imagery.
Only when "Stella was a Diver and She was Always Down" rambles on for six and a half minutes without gaining momentum or gravitas,
la "Specialist" from their Matador debut EP, does the band fault.
But while Julian Casablancas can whine about feeling left out or wallow in an existential drone over whether this is it in regards to hooking up with girls, Interpol retains an impassive understanding of the scene's ridiculousness.
"I had seven faces, thought which one to where / I'm sick of spending these lonely nights training myself not to care," Banks bellows in his effortlessly confident Ian Curtis harkening tenor on the hauntingly bittersweet "NYC," both a tribute and kiss-off to the city.
Like "NYC," "The New" and "Untitled" breathe in a torpid ease as they leisurely unfold, each nuance revealing itself progressively to compose an epic grandeur that's inherent throughout.
When the bright lights have been turned off, Interpol leaves behind a bruised document of emotional miscommunication and the bittersweet realization that unlike most NYC bands, Interpol may actually be justified in their braggadocious aspirations of a coolness
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