Interpol have a new record that’s in the late stages of cooking and they hit the road to test out some of the material at Roadrunner. It’s about what you’d expect; dark, brooding songs with a minimal post-punk engine driving them forward, the band well-camouflaged in their black clothing and bathed in dense smoke, punctuated by blasts of strobe lights. Did you expect a K-Pop record?
They will be back in the general area (Portland ME and Providence RI) later on this summer on a co-headlining bill with Spoon, so if you missed this show you’ll get another chance and also the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the new record, which drops on July 15th. The new single “Toni” popped up a few songs in and “Gran Hotel” made its debut tonight. A slight critique of the band is singer Paul Banks’ somewhat limited vocal range, giving the songs a blanket of sameness. Standards such as “Evil” and especially “Obstacle 1” still have some fire in their bellies and I was most happy to hear “PDA” in the encore, the first time they’ve played it so far on this tour. For better or for worse, you pretty much know what you’re going to get from a new Interpol record and based on the crowd’s reaction, the needle was pointing decidedly in the positive direction.
Tycho was a nice match for the bill, playing an upbeat set of downtempo songs if that makes any sense. They had some nice projected visuals to augment the slightly trippy music that Scott Hansen creates, and he brought along three musicians to flesh out the material.
Matthew Dear took the stage first, playing a set of looped beats with occasional guitar darting under his vocals. There were flecks of chillwave, electropop and even some hip-hop in the mix and got the night going in fine fashion.
Primarily based in Boston, Massachusetts, Tim Bugbee is no stranger to traveling throughout the country or overseas to capture the best live music photos.
