Hey, sorry I’ve been away for a while but the last five months have been sort of hectic for me. For one I moved to a new apartment and away from my nutcase of a (former) roommate. I also began working insane amounts of hours at work. I’m grateful for it, because I know that most people are struggling, but the work certainly made it easier for me to let the column fall by the wayside.
Of course the flip side of the equation is that working all of those hours afforded me luxury like I hadn’t had in quite some time. I’m guessing that I’ve purchased more album in the last nine months than I purchased in the previous two years combined.
I also had the opportunity to see Interpol and just a week later, The Dead Weather.
I’m a fan of Interpol. I can remember being totally slayed by their sound and the video for “PDA.” It’s weird to think about it now, but the video was cool enough to make me give the band a shot.
And despite the diminished returns of subsequent albums, I still rank Turn on Your Bright Lights as a personal favorite. And that’s why I wanted to see them live.
Since I was off on the Sunday they came to town, I bought tickets a few days before and picked them up at Will Call. The two opening acts were inoffensive, but they were opening acts all the same.
By the time Interpol took the stage, the guy behind me to my right was drunk enough to be obnoxiously proclaiming his love for the band at unnecessarily loud volumes. Seriously, he almost ruined the concert for me.
But Interpol came on and totally kicked ass. Well, that’s not quite right. Interpol isn’t really a bad for theatrics. Paul Banks stands at the mic and is polite as can be. Touring members Danny Pajo and Brandon Curtis carefully play their positions as role players and never distract from remaining three members of Interpol. Sam Fogarino is a workhorse who handles percussion with the precision and dedication of chemist.
But Daniel Kessler totally rocked. Dressed in his dapper suit, his kinetic energy was mesmerizing. The dichotomy of a suit and reckless abandon is nothing new, but Kessler makes it look like he invented it and more than that, he makes it look easy. He’s what impressed me most about seeing them live, so much so that when I listened their albums later I tried to single our his playing so I could greater appreciate his contribution to the band.
The show wasn’t perfect; the new material created lulls in the audience’s enthusiasm and certainly necessitated building up excitement again. But the usual suspects were crowd favorites and the energy would always rise again.
It was dope hearing the songs live. My cousin pointed out how refreshing it is that Interpol sounds basically the same life as they do on their album. He remarked that it was refreshing to hear a bad that wasn’t overproduced. And I agree completely.
Despite the obnoxious guy and the lull of the new material from their, at that point, unreleased album, the Interpol show ranked pretty high among the concerts that I’d attended. Part of it was my familiarity with the material and part of it was the performances.
And for a solid eight days, I was slayed by the Interpol show.
Then I went to see The Dead Weather.
But I’ll tell you about that next week.
