Gig Review: Interpol Edinburgh Corn Exchange, August 22 2007

Sigh. Here goes…

24 hours later, it wasn’t a bad gig. It was the fifth time I have seen Interpol, and I’m really impressed that the band I saw as the second from the bottom on an NME package tour in early 2003 have broken through commercially to the extent that this venue was sold out and the albums are going top 10.

It wasn’t a shambolic gig. Hell, they played for well over an hour and they sounded really together, almost too note perfect. They played songs from all of their three LPs, and there were elements that caught me by surprise: How funky they can sound at times. How some of their songs can be sung by huge crowds – time it was, over a thousand people singing along to this would have been as odd as people singing along to Elvis Costello’s ‘I Want You.’

It wasn’t a waste of time, going to this gig…Yet somehow, the venue’s sound system failed to do justice to the band. The band barely spoke to the audience at all -there is being cool, and there’s being aloof.

So will I go and see Interpol again? Who knows. Their third album is no progression from their second, yet they have the potential to move on and produce something really great. Songs like ‘Evil’ and ‘Narc’ and ‘NYC’ particularly still impress on record. But somehow, that’s not quite enough.

Interpol -‘NYC.’ mp3

Interpol -‘The Heinrich Maneuver.’ mp3

(And yes, that is how they spell Manouevre)