During the hazy interim between School of Seven Bells' and Interpol's sets last night, a murky, humid smoke filled the Beaumont's stage. Crowd members gathered and gossiped about some of the more bizarre outfits spotted in the crowd. (Black feathers and a pinned-on red hat were tame compared with a bleach-blond girl in sheer knee-high socks, whom the guy next to me called a "prostitute." Another girl chimed in: "When I wear a skirt, I never have to consider that people might see my chotch, you know?") Girls flipped their hair; guys spilled their beer. At the 45-minute mark, crowd members started to cheer impatiently. Interpol took the stage at 9:30 p.m. sharp, to great roars in the crowd. "Howdy," Paul Banks greeted the crowd. "Good evening."
Rumbling blurs onstage indicated an elaborate light show to come. As the band launched into "Success," three kids in front of me silently screamed, grabbing each other's hands and shaking them in the air, with their faces silhouetted against Interpol's flashing red lights. (It was the personification of dude-euphoria.)
First, let's rewind: School of Seven Bells' sound was just as crystalline and perfectly refracted as the rainbows of light shining in Alejandra Deheza's black, glossy hair. The formerly fuzzy soundscapes of the band's songs were livened with a breath of vitality. The crowd was also admirably filled out -- flowing back to the Beaumont's bar -- considering that most people in the metro were probably entangled in a post-feast stupor at this point in the night.
"She's wearing a poncho. I can't take her seriously," my companion complained. It was a fair point. Deheza's unnerving voice was undercut by the fact that she looked like someone's yoga instructor, but she possesses a voice that most singers have to log hours of studio time to achieve on a record. (The fact that it was live made her harmonious, clear notes all the more arresting.) The lack of SVIIB's female vocal harmonies found on 2008's Alpinisms -- admittedly, the only album of the band's that I'm familiar with -- did thaw a good amount of the band's icy edge.
At one point, Deheza turned her head to the right and coughed discreetly. By the time she introduced the last song, her voice was reduced to a raspy growl. She seemed to have a bit of trouble in the last number: a thudding, tumultuous song that required a lot of ethereal howling.
Despite Deheza's formidable vocal talents, the propulsive beat of the band's drummer was the reason that this soaring music retained any long-term interest throughout the band's set. ("It's like the second or third song after the credits roll," my friend wryly observed. Clearly, he wasn't as susceptible to SVIIB's earth-mother vibes as I was.)
In a venue where dynamics and bass lines frequently mush into a swirling mass of sound, Interpol's songs remained as crisp as a freshly pressed tuxedo shirt. (Speaking of suits: The guys in the band were wearing thick layers of button-ups and blazers, which I can only imagine were close to insufferable inside the humid venue. The windowpanes were fogged from the inside. Uck.)
One thing was immediately apparent from the band's set: Interpol hadn't subscribed to the more irritating shitty musical trends of the last nine years. There were no superfluous synths or folk-rock sentimentality to be found in the band's set list; instead, there was the same caustic dance-rock that populated its debut, 2002's Turn on the Bright Lights, with its disaffected, melancholic underpinnings.
After all, cynicism never goes out of style, does it? Neither do slinky bass lines and toe-tapping drum beats, it seems.
"Evil" sounded just as fresh as it did coming through the speakers in my car on the way to high school. (The phrase Feeling real tan always struck me as ineffably witty, for some reason.) However, "Memory Serves" was my favorite song of the evening: sinister, dark and with all the sustained grandeur of Muse, or dozens of other bands that came after. The encore was without fanfare, too: efficient and streamlined, just like Interpol's set.
For someone who wasn't a super-fan, Interpol's barrage of stylized post-punk may have been a bit monotone, but more than one mouth around me whispered the words as fervently as prayers. Though it wasn't the most bombastic set I've seen at the Beaumont, Interpol's performance had the sleek allure of the starkly modern, like skeletal architecture or modern art. (In the wash of lo-fi noise that has hazed the underground in the last few years, I have to admit that it's nice to hear a straightforward guitar line without a hint of fuzz.) And, best of all, after every song, Banks sported a big, dopey grin, thanks to KC's enthusiastic, bullhorn-throwing crowd.
Set List:
Success
Say Hello to the Angels
C'mere
Hands Away?
Barricade
Rest My Chemistry
Mammoth
Leif Erikson
Evil
Lights
Summer Well
The Heinrich Maneuver
Memory Serves
Not Even Jail
Encore:
Specialist
Narc
The New
Slow Hands
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