Interpol - Our Love to Admire

A new Interpol album is always big news, and time never seems to move fast enough between the announcement and the day it comes out at the....store, yeah, that's the story we'll go with today. It didn't help things when I saw their kick-ass show at Coachella, playing three songs from their new album (they ended up being "Pioneer to the Falls", "Mammoth", and "Heinrich Maneuver"), only serving to further whet my appetite and frustrate.But the magic day arrived, and Our Love to Admire was mine to enjoy ad nauseum. The album starts off with "Pioneer to the Falls", which gives fans what they want most: a sound that is pure Interpol, expansive and rhythm-heavy, but at the same time novel. The piano on this track helps to conjure the dark tone and emptiness that makes this song one of the stand-out tracks. The piano, in general, is a new and more prominent part on many of the songs on Our Love, and adds a nice melodic element to their songs ("Rest My Chemistry", "No I in Threesome).This drive towards a more melodic sound does, at times, dilute the bass lines and rhythm lines that is so quintessential to Interpol, and post-punk in general. They got the mix exactly right on Turn On the Bright Lights, and it became an instant classic. This album isn't terrible....not at all. It's just....not their other albums. Most of the album is what we've come to expect from the NYC band. It's just that the other, not-so-stellar tracks just stand out in so much more. "All Fired Up" doesn't seem like it fits on this album at all, or like some other band wrote it for Interpol. And the last two tracks leave little impression upon me after such a strong opening on the album. This last point bothers me the most; Interpol is known for finishing strong on their albums, and Our Love to Admire breaks out of that mold....unfortunately.Interpol's newest will still fit well into my music collection, and I will still be listening to it years after. I just hope that some of the new on this album aren't scorch marks in the bottom of the pan, and are instead flashes in it.