Interpol

A modern, gleaming Tuscan theatre can turn, in the middle of a cold November night, into a giant question mark.

The air stings, tinged with a decadent colour hovering between purple and black. Visions and sounds that set the stage for the rotten spectacle of the new velvet undergrounds.

Kazu Makino's drunken legs move softly, cradling the melodic, intense voice of Blonde Redhead, who warm up the stage with refined energy. The Pace brothers are pounding, oblique to the point of shrillness, but their noise atmospheres are carried into a dreamlike dimension by the Japanese singer, as ethereal as she is gritty. Tonight, as everyone knows, is a celebration of the dark side of the Big Apple.

Yet while the trio casts its spell, a heartfelt question seems to creep through the still-composed crowd. "Our Love To Admire" is a Hamlet-like record, torn between the pop light of "Antics" and the desperate shadows of that unrepeatable first sonic gem. Those "bright lights" that had dared to disturb ghosts like Ian Curtis and Jim Morrison, in the wake of a certain old New York band that sang about heroin. Are these the Interpol everyone is waiting for? Or are they, instead, the band behind the new single "Heinrich Manuever," bravely pressing on with a Sisyphean boulder on their shoulders?

The moment arrives to find out, as two fierce lions drag a desperate gazelle toward its death.

The four of them step onto the stage, icy and composed, looking as though they've walked straight out of the corridors of Wall Street. Everything, in fact, seems planned with precision: the white smoke, the cold lights, the elegance of a broker's suit. When the hypnotic, melancholy dirge of "Pioneer To The Falls" kicks in, it's clear there will be no slip-ups, not one note out of place.

Kessler's guitar doesn't crowd the mix, leaving room for the track's splendid, atonal minimalism before it detonates into a hammering, dark finale. It's surely one of the best tracks on the new album, and since the neurosis of "Obstacle 1" is spat out with little verve, it almost seems to point to a new, old skin. The elastic "Narc" and "C'mere", however, bring the focus back to the more colorful "Antics" and to an impeccable but ordinary way of playing.

The show climbs the aching scale of "Public Pervert" and readies itself for its indifferent roar as Fogarino's engine revs up while Carlos D begins to add greater depth. The memory of the Smiths in "Say Hello To The Angels" grows more vivid, bursting into a masterful rhythmic whirlwind. And it's no coincidence that it's one of the tear-streaked faces of that gem. Because "Mammoth" sounds rather flat and "No I In Threesome" doesn't go beyond the now-classic Interpol style. Banks seems to mull it over, lights a cigarette, and decides to bring the charge, trying to get the crowd jumping. And the crowd jumps and sings along to those songs specifically built to make people jump and sing. After all, one cannot live on art alone, and so back comes the Burton-esque puppet of "Evil" and the sad little twins "Slow Hands" and "Manuever".

Everyone smiles happily except the blond, introverted singer, who picks out arpeggios over the gothic weave of the new gem "Rest My Chemistry", while Kessler indulges in a dawning psychedelic drift on "The Lighthouse". The crowd is forced into silence, struck by a distorted, unsettling angelic mantra. Layer upon layer, Interpol have by now built their substantial sonic cathedral.

And yet something still seems to be missing. That extra brushstroke that turns a good concert into a great one. The lights are reluctant to come up because, after just over an hour, they demand an immediate return to the stage. The shadows want their fifteen minutes of fame, and Banks knows exactly how to give it to them. The funeral lament of "NYC" flows on relentlessly like a deadly fluid, taking the sadness of "Stella Was A Diver" by the hand and hurling it into the booming void of "PDA", which burns itself out in its perfect instrumental finale.

This time the "bright lights" truly open their eyes, and that giant question mark seems to have vanished.

The Tuscan theater remains a Tuscan theater. The dark side of Interpol remains the dark side of Interpol.

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