Interpol
Interpol

but I did think Antics and Our Love... were pretty terrible, whereas I think the first four tracks here are pretty much spot on. Burying #banks in the mix a bit suits him.

though I think this deserves an 8/10 and will be more enduring than you suggest. As for the "i just need tracks to skip through on my ipod" comment - you're everything wrong with music listeners today.

great to see a big up to the chameleons in there, comparing interpol to joy division(like so many do) is just silly.
Looking forward to buying this next week, this time I havent listened to any of the album cause i want it to be a surprise. For OLTA I had heard several tracks before it came out and when i only had a few new ones to listen to when i bought the record I decided that i'd never listen to leaks again!

the record cover????

i dont think thats not necesarily true at all..

have a listen to talk talk - spirit of eden
the tracks don't work on their own that well... but as a whole it is utterly phonomenal... (it's also not that long either, 6 tracks)

but that's just my opinion

but...
"'Memory Serves' could quite possibly be Interpol's first proper love song"
Not sure about that. Leif Erikson is probably one of the best love songs ever written IMO.

Typical of Drowned In Sound to jump on the Our Love to Admire backlash bandwagon when they initially awarded the album a 9 out of 10 upon release. Great. I don't care if there isn't a consensus among staff members, there should be some sort of consistency.

In short, yes. Or at least find someone with similar perspective. The contradictions are notable. Readers do pick up on these things. I'm sure it's a difficult task to pull off effectively, but it would be nice.

it feels more flowing, more right, each song a good aprt of the album. i really like it's sound, the structure, and above everything the feeling it gives you it is a return to the dark of TOTBL. It really is.

I hate the artwork and the title.

Their albums seem to be getting steadily worse with less hooks, less driving bass lines and less energy. Basically - less of everything that made them so good.

But the real turkey on this album is the echo effect that has been applied to Banks' voice on every track removing the rawness and tenderness of his truly remarkable voice.

It's had 7 or 8 spins and I'll certainly stick with it but this one has to go down as one of the biggest disappointments so far this year.

Now I'm listening to it again and it sounds pretty stellar through the first half. Maybe I just didn't have the volume turned loud enough before...*shrugs*

Okay, so why are you taking it back then? If you aren't really offering any sort of explanation, then you have to understand my point of view. It just sounds suspicious, that's all.

Still a copout. I hate it when writers inflate their reviews due to hype and then disown them once the smoke clears.

Opinions can genuinely change over time, you know. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for worse.

Disregard the post above. I accidentally clicked the post reply button before finishing.

He has compromised his integrity. Do you know what journalism is? It sounds like the typical critic's game of building bands up and knocking them down, which is dishonest and unfair. Our Love to Admire was doomed as soon as it was announced that Interpol had signed to a major label. His current views sound compliant with popular opinion, perhaps to avoid controversy, I don't know, but the review sounds disingenuous. As a reviewer, Dom should be able to handle constructive criticism and my opinions are fair and valid. The musical landscape has not changed drastically enough to warrant an equally dissenting opinion. If anything, his initial score was overstated, which is why I wish more publications would avoid assigning numerical figures to their reviews altogether because ultimately your words are what will matter in the long run—or at least they should. But as I've posted on a different site, Our Love to Admire was not and is not a bad album. Despite being a lesser album than either Turn on the Bright Lights or Antics, mainly accredited to its imbalanced sequencing and an overall lack of coherence, it nonetheless contains several of the band's most career-defining moments. It's still a fine third album.

With Interpol, however, this time the results are far more mediocre than I would have imagined and is the closest thing to an outright disappointment they've released thus far. The band sounds disheartened and defeated with a lack of inspiration rupturing through the seams. It sounds like the work of a band at the brink of implosion, but they did not succeed in channeling that tension into something more artistically transcending. The album's spiritlessness shows in virtually every facet, down to the unimaginative artwork and self-parodic title. When a band self-titles an album at this stage in their career, it usually suggests a reinvigoration in sound and direction, but this isn't it.

"All of the Ways" and "The Undoing" are spectacular. Two of the finest, most ambitious songs this band has ever recorded—striking a perfect balance between grandiosity and restraint. But with a few exceptions, much of the album is fairly stiff in comparison—hollow and pedestrian by Interpol standards. Many unfairly dismissed Our Love to Admire for being notably more cleanly produced and widescreen in its epic grandeur—replete with layers of keyboards and sweeping, score-like orchestral arrangements. The beefier production is often mistaken for pretentiousness, but that album contains some of the most adventurous and boldly defiant music of the band's career, even if the songs don't particularly coalesce as a whole. While it retains the familiarity of its predecessors, there is a genuine sense of momentum in its final stretch. I suspect most of its critics didn't even listen to it. Interpol feels like a retrenchment of sorts, trying to reconcile the tense atmosphere and hypnotic, nocturnal ambience of Turn on the Bright Lights with the relative leanness and sleekness of Antics, but without the songs of either to match. Interpol excels at hooks, which I feel is an overlooked strength of the band, but this feels comparatively toothless.

But your post above pretty much defines the term 'overkill' - you're free to have your own opinion on Our Love to Admire and to state it, but you seem to find it personally offensive that someone might change their mind over it.

cheers.

You're making yourself look like a bigger asshole by obviously not reading carefully as to what I've said. I understand perfectly what Dom is saying, but it still sounds like bullshit. That's just as reasonable and totally my right, case closed.

They don't seem legit because I've seen the same comment everywhere else.

lol that was an add-on. I'm not really arguing anyway, just telling how I see it.

A little too much quibbling for quibbling's sake going on here, I'd say. I completely agree that a critic should be permitted the right to award an album 9/10 (and wholeheartedly believe in that score) at the time of release but 3 years later feel a little differently. I wanted to love 'Our Love To Admire' but several months after release and numerous spins later I couldn't shake the feeling that apart from 'Pioneer To The Falls', 'Mammoth', Pace Is The Trick' and maybe 'The Lighthouse' it was all a little bit disappointing for me. 3 years on my opinion hasn't changed. Others have had a different experience. Such is life.
Getting back to 'Interpol' though, so far I believe this is a sterling return to form - seems that IanJ and justanothersheeldz are hearing what I'm hearing too. (But I reserve the right to revise my opinion a few months/years down the line...)

And since apparently your reading comprehension isn't up to par, I've already said a person reserves the right to offer dissenting opinions in due time, as long as it's for legitimate reasons and not out of accord with what other sources are saying. Which I don't feel is the case here. Hype is a dangerous thing. At the time, critics so desperately wanted Our Love to Admire to be this triumphant third album masterpiece that they exaggerated its merits just to play up to that, but once it settled and revealed itself to be an inferior, albeit still solid follow-up, backlash began, causing the album to become underrated. Antics has suffered the same fate to a lesser extent. Turn on the Bright Lights is a fantastic debut and I agree it is undoubtedly one of the strongest and most influential albums released in the last 10 years, but now everything in its shadow has the unfortunate task of bettering it and subsequently releases can't compete. It's not the end-all, be-all album. Personally, I feel Antics is their crowning achievement, though I'm positively in the minority.

because 'Our Love To Admire' was a disappointment whereas 'Turn On The Bright Lights' and 'Antics' were phenomenally good (to me). Ergo, if 'Our Love to Admire' was a disappointment this is therefore a "return to form" (to me) - make sense? You've said I'm implying it sounds like 'Turn On The Bright Lights' - is that the only Interpol record you like then? I'm not saying that at all - see my explanation above. However, whilst you mention it I do believe that 'Interpol' is a return to the dark ambience of their first record, as others have also suggested.

I understand what you mean, it's just a misused, lazy and excruciating phrase because it's so cliché. I strongly feel that those who are gushing out that tag will be retracting their statements quickly, but this time rightfully so. I feel Interpol will ultimately be seen as far and away the weakest album they've recorded. It's well-produced but the songwriting sounds lethargic. Our Love to Admire is not consistent enough to be a truly great album, but it is still unjustly criticized, and its best moments find the band at its peak. It's certainly not the shit sandwich its often made out to be now. Its lack of focus is its undoing, but at least the ambition remains intact. That's undeniable. What Interpol improves over the last album is consistency, but if the songs are limp and underwritten, then what's the point? And yes, I took that dig because honestly it seemed like you had taken a subliminal stab at me, suggesting that I was arguing for arguing's sake.

'Mammoth' which I think is an absolute belter, I don't think there are any tracks on 'Our Love to Admire' that outshine anything from either of the first 2 records. (This is only my opinion.) I still enjoy the album as a roughly 7/10 album (for me).
I need more time with the new record (I'm waiting for my CD copy) but from just a few initial listens it excites me more than 'Our Love To Admire' did at the same stage last time. For me that's a good indicator. Time and further listens will be the judge though. If it turns out to be another disappointment, I'll call it. Meet you here again in a week?

The first grinderman album, I see there is another one now.

Sheep statement.