Music review
Interpol
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
4 stars out of 5
Twenty years is a long time - in life and in music. When Interpol released their 2nd album, Antics, in 2004, the idea of Donald Trump as US president would have been a cause for laughter - not worldwide anxiety. But they were a band, along with their New York contemporaries, such as The National and the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, which came of age in a post-September 11 America.
The cult post-punk band chose to mark the 20th anniversary of that album with a tour that swept into Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall last night. The august venue, better known for classical concerts, is a far cry from the sweaty clubs the band came up in but 20 years is a long time and if you are celebrating, why not do it in style?
They began with Next Exit, the church-like keyboards, and slow pace, being the perfect opener, and followed the album track listing, going straight into Evil - probably the song that best sums them up: spiky guitars, driving bass and Paul Banks' insistent, brooding vocals.
They are one of those bands which inspire a devoted following and the sold out crowd responded to the art rockers in typical enthusiastic Glasgow style.
After Antics, the three-piece augmented by a live drummer and keyboardist, took a five-minute break (none of us are as young as we were 20 years ago) before returning to play some of their most-loved songs, such as The Rover and Obstacle 1. The only song that failed to impress was All the Rage Back Home, which got lost amongst the reverb.
The musical highlight of the night was Banks' solo during Pioneer to the Falls, when everyone else dropped out, leaving his plaintive voice to carry the hall. You could have heard a pin drop - until someone shouted out towards the end. The counterpoint to the great Glasgow audience cliche is the inevitable moron quota.
Read more
- Biffy Clyro at Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow review
-
'It’s like the 1990s again' - 11 best gigs to book for next month
-
The Beatles borrowed my eyeliner: Scots pop star you've never heard of
The emotional heart of the night came from the singer's heartfelt tribute to Scotland which he described as 'special'. He reminded the audience that their first proper release was on a Scottish label, Chemical Underground, and that Scots had always been with them.
They encored with a punch-the-air PDA - sadly, a chunk of the audience had to leave just before that - perhaps due to our poor late-night train service. No matter, this was a fantastic show.
Antics may be 20 years old and belong to a different, pre-2008 crash era - but their urban paranoid blues has never been more relevant in an age of disinformation, a potential second Trump presidency and climate breakdown.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here