First of all, it is too hot for jumpers. Dear God, when will the price of fashion stop taking casualties? Interpol take the stage in a heat wave of epic proportions – all in black, hair in eyes. Bassist Carlos has a woollen sweater pulled taunt over his wiry frame. Michael Stipe is looking fragile stage left, as Interpol strap on the black Les Pauls and try and get through the set before they implode in clouds of bone-dry dust.
Interpol have always seemed to make a noise much grander than their four members. Shimmering guitars soaked in reverberation, pounding, uncluttered drumming and low-slung bass create a brooding atmosphere shot through with veins of gold. The Joy Division comparisons have been bandied about for the best part of a year, but it takes more than a few NME hacks to raise a New York guitar band out of the current glut of high cheek boned, nicotine stained contenders. Interpol’s scope is on a monumental scale. The air may have the consistency of hot treacle but Paul’s powerful, strangely inhuman vocals carry well, bringing added urgency to the likes of ‘PDA’, ‘Say Hello To The Angels’ and ‘Stella Was A Diver And She Was Always Down.’. They are gloomy, you gotta hand it to them, but when ‘NYC’ rumbles into existence even the most twisted of pessimists would have to battle to suppress the smallest twitch of a smile. On record, it stands out a mile and I was a little sceptical as to how they would pull it off on a huge outdoor skeleton of steel scaffold, with the sun beating down like Gods very own wrath – but they do. The crowd is hit with waves of wonderful, throbbing noise that builds and undulates and – hey! Michael Stipe is tapping his chest and singing along! – and, well, its just a very pretty song.
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Interpol’s sound and style would be spectacular in the lashing rain and dark, but they were in the white heat of Saturday afternoon. They looked and felt a little out of place, but, then again, that’s Interpol’s shtick – the outsider and all that. And played live, their songs all kept the strange detached quality that made me a fan in the first place.
But there’s queer voodoo at work. Interpol’s low throbbings and bleak Winter-In-New-York undertones conjure up a cyclone that whirls around at the back of the crowd, sending newspaper and shreds of black bin bag swirling up into the baking sky. I really have no idea what that was – I was under the assumption that you needed air currents to mash together and create a vortex, but there wasn’t even the faintest breeze. Even Michael Stipe was peering over the top of his huge aviators.
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