I wish I could eat the salt off Of your lost faded lips We can cap the old times Make playing only logical harm We can cap the old lines Make playing that nothing else will change

Have you ever come across the ”Top Ten Worst Lines of Interpol's First Album" ? Here’s a reply to the article:

Paul writes from a position of decadence. To start: "She's always calling my bluff / Her stories are boring and stuff." -This lyric reflects the crux of the entire song: he is so immensely uninterested and disenfranchised by the female subject's modes of expression and communication that he does not feel it necessary to express his boredom by writing in any sort of eloquent tongue. "She's boring and stuff" is the ultimate indication of his own reciprocal boredom. Anything more indicates that he is interested in examining the issue. Progressing further with this theme: The author of this article woefully dismisses the lyric labeled as number 8. Ponies are traditional symbols of the mercurial and fleeting. The song is about the utter inability to connect, particularly sexually, with another person. "She says it helps with the lights off," etc. This inability to achieve sexual connection stems from lack of emotional understanding. The song's power lies in its expression of a subtle yearning for things to actually organically gel, and the sense that this may still be possible. This song is less clinical than much of the album musically, and it is brilliantly intuitive. "She says brief things" simply means that she is relatively closed off and it is difficult communicating with her. His love is there but it is effectively sublimated- which means that it has been forced under due to a larger more pressing issue, i.e. the formulaic, mechanical, clinical desire to emotionally function properly, and the desire to not have to directly address his dysfunction. Paul has made it no secret that he believes that life is not a slow march toward death, but that death validates and presents an excuse for a decadent, indulgent, sensory-based life style. In the 'Stella' lyrics, they are clear and exacting. This song again is about defunct sexual interaction. "Love joy diver' is an underhanded sexual allusion and "catatonic" refers to a unfeeling, unmoving state. Simply, Stella is incapable of performing properly sexually, i.e. she is frigid and disturbed. The persona of the singer is attracted to this type of clinical sexual satisfaction because the pressure of emotional investment is absent. I am not going to go through each of the others for risk of boring the reader further, but it is plain to see that these lyrics, as is the music itself, are very calculated and thought-out. Connotation and delivery are very important with the words. Conversely, the new album, Antics, is much more extroverted and aggressive; it is much less self-examining and self-conscious, and more immediate. Paul's knack for haunting lyrics is in top form on 'Slow Hands' with "...makes me want to pick up a guitar and celebrate the myriad ways that I love you" and Interpol's absolute best lyric and delivery: "ohh how I love you, in the evenings... when we are sleeping... we are sleeping." It seems that this record has reconciled some of the struggles with the concept of love: Love and relation to others is viewed from a very cynical, almost disturbing, lense. But, the hope is still prevalent on this record. It is about accepting the frailty of emotion, an almost proto-existentialism. The line from 'Slow Hands' illustrates this well. It is grammatically incorrect. It should be "the myriad of ways." But this imperfection in the actual presentation of the words reflects his state of mind that such a heroic and romanticized view of love is unrealistic and maybe impossible. Love and the mechanisms of relation to others is imperfect. Yet he tries nonetheless to express himself and his acknowledgement that true connectedness is possible. The emotional frailty and dysfunction examined on the first album may not be dysfunction but instead the natural state of things. This record is more proactive and has a "take control" mentality to it- things may be flawed but it is a viable approach on life to actively indulge in and embrace the peculiarities of human interaction and "look the other way.

she sleep tight on my 200 couches til i grim rite

blah :P

(Things I’ve been quoting recently)

Interpol es lo mejor de mi vida.

Paul Banks at Paradiso, Amsterdam.

📸 Peter Pakvis, 2002

pda and obstacle 1 arelike sisters to me

I wanna see What kind of place they'd lay for me I forgive you but there's no pretending It becomes automatic, it becomes all but free It becomes automatic, it becomes all but free

A very long time ago, my mother-in-law mentioned that Justin used to skate so quickly and without much finesse and as such would trip over the blue line. And something in my brain just went: oh. And then I...wrote, like, a million words. And got people to like hockey? And spent most of my mid to late-20s writting about this fictional hockey team with their kids and their kids' kids and people made art and I made spotify playlists and it was, like, my little safe space of happiness and found family and an absolute excess of love that I could just dive into whenever I needed it and then life happened and I haven't written in forever and we moved and @ohmightydevviepuu asked me for my address because she bound totbl by hand! Five volumes! They're named for periods! She wrapped them in laces! And I gave her the wrong addresss because we just.moved but all five (!!!) volumes got here and I actually cried and ran around our new house because it's been years and literally almost a million words, but this is my whole fandom soul and all five (!!!) volumes are going in our new reading room.

Interpol - What’s In My Bag? Amoeba interview Jan. 17, 2019.

Daniel put in his bag: 

- Bad Brains (ROIR sessions) (1982) “One of the best hardcore records..”

- Badlands (1973) by Malick “..it has a meditative quality to it. And I like the music too.”  Explains how he is a fan of how Martin Sheen puts on his jacket. :D

- Roy Orbison record. About the song ‘Pantomime’: “starts humbly and builds into this sweeping sort of orchestral gigantic piece.”

- Aphex Twin: Richard D. James Album (1996) “It was a big moment in electronic music.”

-PJ Harvey: To Bring You My Love (1995) “I love the minimalism yet the effectiveness of her approach to song writing on this album, and the space.”

Paul put in his bag: 

- Only God Forgives (2013) film by Refn “... such a beautiful film. Beautifully shot.”

- Liars: They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top (2001) “This was a real good road companion to me (while touring TOTBL).”  “The rhythm section is so insane.”

- Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) by Weir “I may or may not have been so obsessed with this film at one point, that I got a tattoo inspired from it.”

- John Frusciante: Niandra Lades And Usually Just A-Tshirt (1994) “The high points on this really influenced me as an artist..” 

Sam put in his bag:

- Hardcore Devo Vol. 2 (1991) “..really very punk rock.”

- Die Warzau: Disco Rigido (1989) About a song: “Very on the aggressive side [of dance music] so there’s not much to begin with. And that’s the beauty of it.”

-Jesu: Heart Ache/Dethroned (2010) “I think it’s just one guy with a heavy guitar and a lot of electronics.” “Total ear candy”

- Heart: Dreamboat Annie (1975) “For my baby mama.” “Ann Wilson has one of the best voices ever.”

favorite song off each interpol album + favorite interpol concept?

thank u for the ask!! i luv yapping. so sorry for putting this one off i had a massive crisis because i dont know what u mean by concept. on my dumb girl shit if u will

totbl- roland!! who doesn't love to hear paul say cmon pussycat mid song?? i am a wholehearted stella fan tho.

antics- take you on a cruise. i literally make money like fred astaire

olta- okay either pace is the trick or heinrich maneuver i love them both.

s/t- the undoing for suuuure

el pintor- my desire because im a massive whore for the drumming in this i love it so MUCH AUGHHH and actually the bassline works really well

marauder- stay in touch!! i listened to this album start to end for the first time on cd and picked up the tracklist to figure out which song it was when this started playing. so good.

tosomb- GRAN HOTEL!! I AM A GRAN HOTEL TRUTHER!!!!

Interpol ~ TOTBL era

Thinking of dressing up as totbl/antics era paul or daniel for the concert on sunday night