KEY POINTS:
It seems Interpol need a bit of a boot. No doubt it will mark their beautifully pressed suits, but the New Yorkers' third album, Our Love To Admire, needs a kick-start. On first track, Pioneer to the Falls, which admittedly has beautiful moments of eerie oboe, it's inhabited by sludgy bass and dragging beats. It's not the elegantly dour and dapper Interpol we came to know on 2002's excellent Turn on the Bright Lights and 2004's Antics.
But three minutes in, an eye-watering guitar and urgent militant drums beat the song into life. That's the quality of this album: before songs get too maudlin they kick in, be it instrumentally on Pioneer to the Falls, vocally on Pace Is the Trick, or mood-wise on the climactic Wrecking Ball.
Our Love To Admire is different from the band's debut and better than Antics. If anything, those previous albums were a little samey, but this album is a more expressive, bold and - crazy as it seems - flamboyant Interpol.
Drone king Paul Banks even sings about threesomes - okay, let's not get carried away, No I in Threesome is more a song about a love triangle than a dirty menage a trois. But it's good to hear Interpol getting down and dirty and having a little fun, with the music at least.
Label: Capitol
Verdict: This time there's more going on in dapper New Yorkers' music