An evening inside most concert halls and venues usually involves avoiding the aggression of over-zealous security personnel and dodging drunk patrons who look like they’re ready to throw up on your shoes. But on Tuesday night at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Interpol offered a cultured break from the usual live music experience.
As a way of promoting their upcoming fifth album “El Pintor,” the New Yorkers played to a specially invited crowd in front of the Temple Of Dendur – the ancient Egyptian monument housed permanently at the museum.
It was an aptly dramatic backdrop for a compellingly dramatic band. Interpol’s brooding, sonorous gloom-rock has helped the trio establish themselves as one of the city’s most revered and adored outfits over the last decade. Their four-year absence left an undeniable hole in the local music scene, so when guitarist Daniel Kessler opened up the night with the spindling notes to “Untitled,” the small but passionate audience greeted them like long-lost friends.
Interpol were once dogged with constant comparisons to Joy Division but now, they simply sound like themselves. New songs such as “All The Rage Back Home” and “Same Town, New Story” don’t do anything particularly new for the group but they still have the power to mesmerize their fans, not least because of singer Paul Banks and his now-familiar baritone voice which boomed around the room. The only member of Interpol unable to make his presence felt was Sam Fogarino. His masterful drumming normally acts as both an anchor and propeller for the band, but in the cavernous space (not usually used for live performances), that authority was occasionally lost.
But any gripes about sound were eclipsed by the setting and most importantly of all, Interpol’s many magnificent songs. Chiefly, the still-unmatched “NYC” (from their landmark 2002 debut “Turn On The Bright Lights”) closed out the show with a tidal wave of emotion. It’s an anthem of alienation that only residents of Gotham can truly comprehend; “The subway, she is a porno/The pavements, they are a mess,” sang Banks sombrely. No matter how Disney-fied New York gets, Interpol still have the power to give it that wonderfully monochrome tint of old, and that is just one of the reasons that it’s so reassuring to have them around again.
The band relocate to the Bowery Ballroom on Thursday to play another hometown show but sadly, they’re unlikely to bring the Temple Of Dendur with them.