You can see the problem.
Sure, points for honesty. The brief, tyrannical reign of New Wave 2.0 was always about extrapolating what could have come after the 1989, had the music industry not chosen instead to wholesale recycle the Seventies with far worse fashion. If we hadn’t had the gall to mock trousers that were needlessly wide at the ankles while wearing T-shirts that changed fucking colour. If you goal was a do-over, who better to base that on than one of the greatest what-ifs of the eighties or any other decade? Let other bands hide their guiding lights under a bushel. As their first album declared, Interpol was letting you know exactly where the flame spilled out from.
Not that light is in evidence here. Even the night is blind here, finding what might be pinpricks of illumination through heat alone. The one mode that Prelimterpol tended to get right for me, as we’ve discussed, was the cavernous soundscape. The alien world described over a distorted connection by a feverish, dying astronaut. “Leif Erikson” nails that mode perfectly, from the title outwards; an insomniac always on the verge of falling asleep, experiencing the flow of time as a moonless sail across an infinite, glass-flat sea. Trapped in the liminal prison where everything thought circles, ripping your skin with each rotation. What was it she said about me? What if she shows up early? What if I’m as dead as she thinks I am? Everything repeats, everything hurts, nothing resolves, nothing heals.
There are songs you should only listen to at night, and songs you mustn't listen to at night. This is both. A hymn for the gloaming. A warning of what’s coming, on those nights where sleep is an ocean away.
B-side:
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