bobbysketch

Although Interpol’s live shows are a little rough around the edges, the beauty of their music makes up for any lack of theatrics. They got through some trouble at the beginning of the show and provided a solid 90 minutes of harmonic bliss to the big, but-not-sold-out crowd at their homecoming performance last night in Madison Square Garden. Here’s a brief recap and a bunch of pictures and videos from the show.

The show opened with the band playing “Pioneer to the Falls,” the opening track to Our Love to Admire, veiled behind a curtain. There was quite a bit of feedback and that seemed to throw the band out of sync, but the visuals were admirable.

As the show continued into their second song, the crowd was a qit bewildered as to why the curtains were still up. Were they trying to play like The Gorillaz – all silhoutted? This seemed to take some energy out of the crowd and then, Paul Banks, the lead singer, confirmed that there was some kind of problem by saying to the crowd “hey, we’re gonna take a little break while we get this big fucking white screen down.”

After the screen came down, the band seemed to get into a great groove, playing an array of songs from all of their albums. They satisfied me, the casual Interpol fan, with “NYC,” “No I in Threesome,” “Rest my Chemistry,” “Stella Was A Driver And She Was” and “Obstacle 1.”

It’s very easy to rave about what a fantastic show it was – and it was. Interpol was back home in NY for a big arena show, they had two encores, and an amazing light show. All of this was contrary to the fact that maybe only 10% of the crowd were really true Interpol fans. A majority of people there were like myself, or even worse, they only knew a couple of songs from Our Love to Admire. If I were Interpol, I would have wanted every person in the crowd to know every word to every song on every album. That’s a dream for any band, but it took away from some of the energy the crowd could have had.

If I could change one thing about the show, I would have asked that Interpol close the show with “NYC.” It would have been the perfect tribute to their hometown, a wonderful acknowledgement to the fans that they really enjoy being back here and this is special for them. Even still, they closed the show with “Untitled” the opening track to their first album – Turn on the Bright Lights, and even though most of the crowd was clueless as to what was being played, it gave the true fans something to glowflully walk away with.

UPDATE: Incognito Guy is right – and that just about sums up what I was talking about earlier about casual fans: quite a bit of people left after the first encore. In fact, as Interpol left the stage the first time, it was ridiculously obvious that they were going to come back for an encore. It may have been the weakest attempted walk off the stage I have ever seen. And the crowd really only got into bringing them back for a short few seconds. Isn’t the point of an encore to kind of let the crowd beg for you to come back? The second encore was a little better, because it was more of a surprise.

Thanks for the setlist!

Enjoy the pics and videos…

“Pioneer to the Falls”

“Obstacle 1″

“Rest My Chemistry”

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts