December 5th 2012

The year is 2001. A few kids graduate from New York University and start an indie rock band. Sounds like a plan for mediocrity if you ask me. But that isn't the case. At all. Interpol's masterful debut album Turn On The Bright Lights just turned 10 years old this month, and still do this day it holds as one of the most influential and solid indie rock albums of all time. Even with all of the imitators in the last decade, the quality of the songs hasn't diminished in the slightest.

At first listen, TOTBL may seem like another vapid, hollow indie rock album, with tightly wound, repetitive guitar parts and the surefooted, robot-style drum beats, and frontman Paul Bank's deadpan vocals and nonsensical lyrics, because honestly, the album is pretty basic when it comes it instrumentals. You wont find any technically powerful musicianship here. It's all very straightforward. Now, that isn't always a bad thing. Music doesn't always have to challenge its own ideas or present new ones. And that idea shines with this album. In 2001, I'm sure this album was a complete breath of fresh air from what was coming out in the 1990's, and set a prime example for the huge wave in indie rock and post-punk outfits that would come out in the years to come. After all that said, listening to it today still sets itself apart from everything you've heard before.

It's hard for me to explain what makes this album so great, but it just is. It's just one of those releases where every single song could be a single and catches your ear and won't let go until next, and the next, and the next. Songs like "PDA" and "Obstacle 1" are among some of the greatest and most influential indie rock tunes to date. What stands out the most in this music is without a doubt the drumming and the vocals. The drums are seriously signature and as soon as the beat in PDA hits, you know exactly what you're listening to. All there is left to do is let it sink in and enjoy every second of it. The songs have a strange quality make you feel close to them, but only when singing along. While at the same time feeling very cold and lifeless. That comes easily with the help of Bank's vocal style. While what he's singing about may not even be real or make any sense, "my best friend's a butcher, he has sixteen knives / he carries them all over the town at least he tries oh look it stopped snowing" These lyrics could try to be interpreted as something meaningful, but essentially mean nothing. Being a newly graduated student from NYU being in an indie rock band i'm sure Banks didn't have many real problems on his mind. 

So if Interpol is just another band, making basic songs, why should you listen to them? I revisit the album because of how much character is packs with every song. Again, I'm not completely sure what makes this album so great, but whatever it is, it works. Interpol hasn't made an album this great since, and who knows if they ever will. Let's just hope everyone remembers this album as the pinnacle and blueprint of modernized indie rock for years to come.