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Interpol Live
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
Went to see Interpol play at Sentrum Scene in Oslo on Thursday last week.
In the UK, you go see a band on a school night, the doors will open around 8pm, support on by 8.30pm, main band on by around 9.30pm, finishing between 11-11.30pm, allowing everyone to get to bed at a reasonable time. Maybe its an Oslo thing, or maybe I’m just getting old, but we went to the gig at 8pm, the support didn’t get on until 9.30pm, and Ollie, Matt and myself were ready for bed before Interpol even came on. Nah, its not just an Oslo thing - it was the same in New Zealand. Lets face it, I’m getting old.. 
Anyway, so Interpol came on with Pioneer to the Falls, the first track from the new album, Our Love to Admire, before launching into PDA from Turn on the Bright Lights. Bloody excellent start to a gig.
After that, songs were mostly chosen from the second and third albums, and tiredness set in. I think their first album, Turn On The Bright Lights, is bloody superb - dark, moody and atmospheric with just some damn fine songs. I never really took to the second album - the songs sounded all a bit samey to me - similar tempos, rhythms and volumes, and somewhat lacking in the atmosphere of the first. The most recent album is like a mix between the first two, and has some great songs on it, but not as strong as the first in my opinion. But with the set list comprising mostly of songs from the last two albums, the gig seemed to suffer from a similar lack of dynamics I found with the second album.
They did play excellent versions of Obstacle 1 and Roland however, and NYC was just beautiful. And of course they finished up with a brilliant version of Stella Was a Diver And She Was Always Down.
We walked out into the Norwegian night at 12.45, and it was still light - I will never get used to Norwegian summer nights. Maybe this is why gigs always end later here - everyones confused as to just what the time actually is.
Hope all is well with you down…
