At Interpol in Paradiso the energy just won’t hit the baseboards

Pop

Interpol. Seen: 29/10, Paradiso, Amsterdam. Repeat 30/10 (sold out). Info: paradiso.nl

Halfway through the first of the two sold-out Interpol shows, a guitarist on the left is dancing maniacally alone while squeezing a mountain of reverb from his guitar. On the right, the bassist stands with his legs apart, with his instrument low between his legs, joylessly heaving disco lines into the ground. And in the middle, frontman Paul Banks belts out his lyrics monotonously and unintelligibly.

So this is how a former festival headliner celebrates an anniversary: ​​with their album Antics the New York band really hit something in 2004. After a prickly debut that was immediately widely picked up, Interpol simply became better at being Interpol on that second album. There was more melody in the music, the production was a bit friendlier, the singles were full of catchy delays and upshifts. The band introduced a generation that hadn’t grown up with bands like Joy Division and Echo & the Bunnymen to a dusted-off version of post-punk. Think staccato bass parts, angular guitars full of reverb, distant vocals, rather incomprehensible lyrics. And then the band was cool too. Before then. Always in a suit, always with a cloud of chemical self-confidence from drug use. Metropolitan gothic, they stood out in a series of bands that broke through in New York around that time.

Not much going on

That coolness no longer appears to be self-evident when they play their album in its entirety in Paradiso. The black suits are without the swagger of the past. Don’t worry, it’s also twenty years later. It is also not a disaster that the original bassist Carlos D. (Carlos Dengler), who added a lot to the first albums, is no longer in the band for a while. Or that the show visually has little more to it than some flashing lights at the back of the stage, but the frontman nevertheless keeps his sunglasses on in style. It’s a shame how flat the band sounds. And while the record Antics still stands. It’s already disappointing with opener ‘Next Exit’. In this former church of all places, it is a shame that the organ around which the slow, sustained song revolves sounds thin. Banks’ vocals remain deep in the mix throughout the show. Unintelligible, rattling in a bad way, without the depth that often gives it color. Of course there are bounce back moments. The album’s biggest singles, ‘Evil’ and ‘Slow Hands’, send an enthusiastic shudder full of energy through the room. People sing along. Also with a single greatest hit, which comes after the album played in its entirety. But that energy just doesn’t want to hit the plinths as hoped for an anniversary show of such an iconic record.

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