To Be Blared From Cars

Our Love to Admire opens beautifully with the long, haunting guitar intro on “Pioneer to the Falls.” It rises like a fine mist among the graves until singer Paul Banks begins his prayer that “the soul can take three stowaways”—an aching plea that only gets lovelier with the addition of Spanish-style guitars. Although Interpol never quite re-conjures this restless perfection, the following 11 songs are pensive, intense and begging to be blared from cars on dark nights.Our Love to Admire has not evolved dramatically from Antics, its well-regarded predecessor. The mood remains energetic, yet shadowed by doom. The sound is still textured and atmospheric, albeit with a newly acquired major label sheen (the band signed with Capitol before releasing this record.) This gloss makes the album feel less intimate than either Antics or Turn On the Bright Lights (Interpol’s debut).

Banks does not withhold lyrically on Our Love to Admire. He makes stark and poignant declarations that evoke violence, want and unrest. On “All Fired Up,” he insists “I can read you like a gun,” in “Scale” he observes “Under a molten sky, the days collide,” and on “Wrecking Ball” he warns, “I’m inside, like a wrecking ball through your eyes.”

The combination of raw, often murky lyrics with a feeling of distance creates a subtle, yet powerful tension on Our Love to Admire. Even the album’s single and bona fide party song “Heinrich Maneuver” is infected with this sensibility. Although the record isn’t massive or striking, it is saturnine, melancholy and even a bit romantic. If it doesn’t appeal to you on first listen, don’t lay it aside. Take it with you on a long drive and wait for night to fall.