OK, Interpol, you’re cool. You packed House of Blues with a seeming wave of your sun-malnourished hands, your casually dressy threads draped tight and angular over your wiry bodies, and aside from, like, three somber "thank yous," you didn’t bother with between-song banter. No, that’s just not your style. Your swag is a darker sort, dictatorial and rigid. We clapped, but standing tall, and saluting felt just as appropriate. [All photos by Mike Wilson.]
Not that Orlando holds it against you. They ate it up, fixated gapes and subtle mouthing of words galore. Thursday was your night, and with your coolly adroit and camera-ready demeanor, you probably knew that before even hitting the first note.
In the meantime, we all had to endure the embarrassing cacophony of opening threesome Twin Tigers. How they came to the “dream noise” description on their Myspace page is just baffling to me based on the sound they actually delivered. Blaming the band as a whole would be unfair, however. It’s all on the shoulders of frontman Matthew Rain [pictured left]. With no regard for vocal volume control, he not only violated his poor mic with a flurry of spittle and hot breath, he assaulted our eardrums for a tedious 30 minutes. The music on its own — without the grandpa-wasted-and-singing-karaoke-again parts — was quite palatable. Awash in big waves of reverb, post-hardcore sensibility, and, at times, quite epic in structure, Twin Tigers' instrumental compositions are probably the best thing they have going for them, and that’s being kind of generous.
If anything, the audible suffering Twin Tigers inflicted made the promise of Interpol all the more enticing. Soon enough, the lights fired up, the fog blasted, and the now four-piece ensemble otherwise known as Interpol hit the stage. Opener “Success” off their upcoming self titled LP felt stale and uninspired upon my admittedly first listen. “Who kidnapped, tranquilized, and forced Interpol to write music?” I wondered.
This article appears in Aug 19-25, 2010.