Alexandra Palace
30.11.07
New York, New York post punk rockers, Interpol, hit London in fine form last Friday when they slowly, but gracefully, set the Palace on fire with one of the best live gigs I’ve ever set ears to. They have a wonderful sound with extracts of the Editors, Joy Division, The Cure and even The Strokes (in their early years).
They use repetitious guitar riffs and focus quite heavily on bass which when accompanied by smart vocals results in a very unique yet very New York type of sound. They are a bright bunch of talented musicians and write music far beyond most of the rubbish that gets radio play these days and therefore capture my attention much easier than some ex Libertine hero whose shambles can only be explained as ‘white’ noise!
The set list was laid out extremely well; they kicked off with ‘Pioneer to the Falls‘, a great opener after which they worked they’re way through some of the other great tunes of their 3rd Album, Our Love to Admire, with ‘Wrecking Ball’, ‘The Scale’, ‘Rest My Chemistry’, ‘Mammoth’, ‘The Heinrich Maneuver’, ‘All Fired Up‘ and the latest single, ‘No I In Threesome’ all in there. The audience received the new comers with open ears and sang along in gigging harmony.
Personally, I think Interpol was probably one of the best sounding live bands I’ve ever listened to, Paul Banks (Lead Vocals, Guitar) and Daniel Kessler (Guitar, Vocals) sang every song exactly as they were recorded on disc and it sounded pretty fucking amazing! The set was quite long, but no-one complained and everyone seemed to be having a really good time. The palace was packed, but it wasn’t uncomfortably full, you could easily access the bars and lavatories without missing too much of the music. The band let loose and started belting out the numbers that help them reach their respected stardom, amongst these heavy weights we heard ‘Evil’ , ‘Narc’ , ‘C-mere’ , ‘Slow Hands’ and my favorite still, ‘Obstacle 1‘. It was an all round solid performance, new, old, fresh and established, it had everything it needed and lacked everything it didn’t!
Ally Pally doesn’t seem to hit the spot for some people, but I digested the evening rather well, the sound was equally distributed and well balanced, even though it lacked a tiny bit of base around the outsides for that full affect. I’d say Ally Pally came in at 8/10 for sound and the band 9/10 on deliverance, they were outstanding and I would definitely see them live again if ever granted another chance. The fact that they didn’t talk much bullshit between songs made it even better; they’re musicians and they concentrate on the music.
2P
Photo taken from www.andrewkendall.com