Rainy Day Music #2: Turn On The Bright Lights
February 24, 2014
Thanks go to the inimitable DJ Paz Monge (aka pazzybb) for nominating Interpol’s 2002 debut Turn On The Bright Lights as this week’s Rainy Day Album. In contrast to the pastoral neo-classicisms of last week’s pick, Grizzly Bear’s Yellow House, this album is a darker affair.
TOTBL is strongly associated with the early-2000s “post-punk revival.” Immediately following the Strokes’ floodgate-opening debut with an even more blatant post-punk sound, Interpol risked being lost among the countless copycats. Instead they emerged with the best album of the lot.
Where the Strokes disguised clever, upbeat pop songs with stylishly ratty production, TOTBL takes dark, depressive post-punk churners and blankets them in hi-fi glory. This album could take on any of Radiohead’s for the title of Best Sounding Rock Album. Every sound is blown up and projected into a vast sonic space. The drums are massive, and the bass often leads the way with its fluid, assertive lines. But there’s no question that the album’s dominating instrument is the guitar.
Whether in clean, gauzy sheets (“NYCÛ) or, more often, breathlessly aggressive downstrokes (“PDAÛ), guitar seeps in to fill the gaping canyon that the production has left for it. The guitar lines on this album interweave with a near-baroque harmonic genius. A perfect example is the beautiful “Untitled,” ushering in the album with two sets of pristine chords blanketed in reverb. As the song progresses, more guitars are added, playing lead lines all over the stereo field until they become an overwhelming sensory experience.
But dominating even the guitars are Paul Banks’ vocals. Armed with the perfect post-punk baritone, halfway between Ian Curtis’s despair and David Byrne’s mania, Banks towers over the monolithic instrumentals, overflowing with drama and rage. The chorus hook of “You go stabbing / Yourself in / The neck” on “Obstacle 1” is simultaneously terrifying and alluring in its delivery. His voice is an instrument of power and he wields it masterfully on TOTBL.
Interpol have gone on to make several more albums without much sonic deviation, but the reason this one stands out is that it never lets up its attack. From “Untitled” to the nocturnal cool-down “Leif Erikson,” the album builds an intense momentum, with song after song delivering churning catharsis or stately, despondent reverie.
While the album’s first four tracks are the most popular, nearly every song boasts its own highlight moment(s). Take the second half of “Say Hello To The Angels,” which turns the jaunty, Smiths-influenced tune into a brutal, jagged march. Or the chorus of “Stella Was A DiverÛ_” where Banks’ repeated cries of “She broke away / Broke away” are answered with tense, burning guitar chugs. Or the moment halfway through “The New” where all hell breaks loose and the guitars turn from chiming symphony into bent-note, toxic-waste chaos.
My personal favorite song, though, is “Hands Away.” Coming halfway through the album, “Hands Away” is its moment of calm, beginning with a single, lonely guitar and melancholic lyrics. It slowly grows from this solitary beginning by adding a minimal cymbal rhythm, echoing guitar, and subtle synths, until the whole thing is swept up in a deluge of strings. When the bass finally enters, Interpol reach a climactic moment of serene, gorgeous rapture.
With all of its New York imagery and postmodern angst, TOTBL is definitely an album for urban rain. When heavy, gray drops blur the lights of skyscrapers and public transportation, and the strangers brushing by you are obscured by raingear, Interpol’s maximalist gloom is guaranteed to provide the perfect soundtrack. While Yellow House contained songs that created their own unique worlds, the songs on TOTBL cohere and turn the album into a microcosm, a 50-minute trance of driving rhythm and endless texture and catharsis. And unlike Yellow House, Turn On The Bright Lights does not resemble the storm, but enhances it. It will suck you right in, bringing crushing significance to the raindrops against your cheeks, and when it finally spits you back out you’ll be itching to run back into its gusts again.
