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 Crestfallen
Interpol
Our
Love to Admire (capitol)
Capitol Records, the new major-label home of Interpol, did
the band a great disservice when they released the group’s
new album, Our Love to Admire, in July. Interpol just
aren’t a summertime band. They ain’t no sunshine-loving, arena-anthem-creating,
summer-sing-along act. Hell, you shouldn’t even put an Interpol
CD into your player if the sun is still in the sky. Like Depeche
Mode and Joy Division, Interpol’s songs just don’t properly
resonate until their weighty gloom can be supported by darkness.
(Snow and/or rain also help.) Interpol know this; Paul Banks
even croons it on one of the album’s stand-out tracks, “Scale”:
“You think they know us now?/Wait ’til the stars come out.”
Our
Love to Admire finds the band stripping themselves of
most of their friendlier traits. In most cases, the punk-disco
beats that drove their last two albums are gone, replaced
by steady, funeral-march drumming. Album opener “Pioneer to
the Falls” is relatable to “Untitled” or “NYC” from the band’s
debut, but rather than being propelled by throbbing bass lines
and echoing drums, the song snakes along with spiky guitar
leads and twinkling piano, until a cascading guitar break
sends the song spiraling to its trumpet-dominated end.
The upbeat numbers pay off quickly. “The Heinrich Maneuver,”
“No I in Threesome” and “Who Do You Think?” are playful and
propulsive, featuring Interpol’s classic swagger and knowing
wink. “All Fired Up” is an album highlight that gives off
a Talking-Heads-meets-Mogwai vibe, and could easily earn the
band a radio hit; it stomps like no Interpol track has stomped
before.
Other tracks make you work for the reward, like the Pixies-inspired
“Rest My Chemistry,” which rather humorously details Banks’
cocaine troubles. That song and “Mammoth,” a freight train
of a song that finds Banks repeating “Spare me the suspense,”
announce that the party is over, and real life has set in
for the notorious NYC socialites. Gone are the dance beats,
along with the hope that rock & roll is going to fix everything.
As it turns out, it just makes everything worse: drugs, Hollywood
girlfriends, hangers-on, forgotten family, hangovers and excess,
excess, excess.
So welcome to the new, extra-depressed world of Interpol.
It may not be so much fun right now, but wait until that next
breakup, ’til the leaves fall off the trees and it’s too cold
to go outside. Or, as Banks says, just wait ’til the stars
come out.
—David
King
 Rufus
Harley
Courage:
The Atlantic Recordings (Rhino Handmade)
On Nov. 25, 1963, jazz saxophonist Rufus Harley had an epiphany.
All activities across the country were at a standstill for
President Kennedy’s funeral. As Harley watched the procession
on television, nine bagpipers played as they solemnly strode
in the procession, and he knew instantly how to achieve the
sounds that had thus far been only in his head. An accomplished
player on tenor and soprano sax, as well as flute, he was
to set them all aside, devoting himself to becoming a piper
inside a jazz setting.
Courage
is an apt title, for Harley was seen by some as a novelty
act, by others as a sonic visionary. With his four Atlantic
albums now nearing 40 years old, they sound as bracing as
ever. He dealt with the inherent range and key limitations
of the bagpipes by never pushing them into contexts where
they would fail. Producer Joel Dorn, who also worked with
such ’60s jazz iconoclasts as Yusef Lateef and Rahsaan Roland
Kirk, helped find contemporary material from the pop canon
that sounds absolutely riveting—all the more so now that the
original hits (including “Windy,” “Sunny,” and “Love Is Blue”)
are fading away. Sadly, Harley succumbed to cancer at the
age of 70 just months before this set was released. He was
abreast of the preparations though, delightedly announcing,
“It’s bagpipe time!”
—David
Greenberger
 Moby
Grape
Listen
My Friends! The Best of Moby Grape (Columbia/Legacy)
Largely confined to the dustbin of rock history, the San Francisco-based
band Moby Grape have long been tagged as one of rock’s more
crestfallen contenders for musical glory. Coming on like Buffalo
Springfield’s punkier younger brothers, Moby Grape, on their
1967 debut, made an album treasured by psych-rock fans as
a high-water mark: an abundance of hook-filled rock, soul
and country sent into amphetamine-fueled hyperdrive. (Unlike
their buddies in the Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane,
these guys craved concision, with only two of the debut’s
13 songs clocking in over three minutes.) But as great as
their first record was, common wisdom has held that their
subsequent releases stunk to high Valhalla. While this one-disc
retrospective does much to rectify the Grape’s reputation
as a one-album wonder, there is the un mistakable sense of
a band losing their moorings as the disc nears its end.
Kicking off with six unimpeachable classics from the debut,
the disc takes a quick dive with “Bitter Wind,” a bit of treacly
hippiedom that flounders despite the ballsy singing and typically
amazing bass playing of Bob Mosley. “Murder in My Heart for
the Judge” and “Can’t Be So Bad” (where the band take a swing
at the style of Blood, Sweat & Tears, and improve upon
it), from the sophomore album Wow, show the band developing
on their strengths, and knowing that these gems will never
get played on the oldies stations that they belong on is one
of the pains of being a Grape fan.
Skip Spence devotees get two rare finds here: “Motorcycle
Irene,” a paean to a biker chick that literally ends with
a crash, and “Seeing,” a song that sounds like Spence and
the rest of the band going their separate ways. As the last
few songs on this peculiarly saddening compilation attest,
the band became disillusioned, still playing a far- seeing
version of country-rock but without the bite that they or
similar bands like the Flying Burrito Brothers were capable
of. “Truly Fine Citizen,” the title track of their fifth and
final album, closes things out on a high, with Jerry Miller
and Don Stephenson somehow channeling the sound and vision
of the absent Spence, at least for a glorious 1:48—they must
have given their all, for the silence that follows is deafening.
(Coxsackie’s Sundazed Records will reissue the first five
Moby Grape albums this fall.)
—Mike
Hotter
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