I said I'd be sharing my Amoeba purchases this week, and today is a 7-inch single from Interpol's debut album.
I jumped on the Interpol bandwagon early, seeing them at the Cat's Cradle with a few hundred other people and buying a first pressing of their debut album. I jumped off big time after the second album, scared off by bad reviews and eventually, bad first-person experiences.
Sunday's LA Times included an article (it's actually a snippet of his new book) by Simon Reynolds, author of Rip It Up and Start Again, that made me think of Interpol. In it, he writes about the current obsession with "retro" music, and how many bands seem to be recycling older sounds (the current number of bands with an '80s sound is staggering to me).
With their first album, Interpol was accused of ripping off Joy Division, but it seems that when they started to try something different with the third album, people like me jumped ship (to use a different metaphor). Is it because the songs were bad? Would I be happy listening to another Interpol album that sounded like the debut? I have to think the answer is Yes, as their first album is one of my favorites. But to quote Reynolds: Could it be that the greatest danger to the future of our music culture is ... its past?
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