Gig review: Interpol at O2 Academy Leeds

The New York indie veterans round out the Bank Holiday weekend with their sharp, staccato songcraft.

"Thank you very much," Interpol frontman Paul Banks tells a sweaty, heaving crowd at Leeds's O2 Academy as the final note of Narc rings out. It's among the only words he says all night; across a taut ninety-minute set, he and his bandmates firmly let the music do the talking as they round out the Bank Holiday weekend.

It has been over two decades since the New York indie veterans broke out with celebrated debut Turn On the Bright Lights; here, they return to West Yorkshire for the first time in four years, behind 2022's seventh album The Other Side of Make-Believe, amid a short tour after their headline performance at Derbyshire's Bearded Theory.

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Their sound has not changed too much in the interim. Banks, guitarist Daniel Kessler and drummer Sam Fogarino still preside over a brand of sharp, staccato songcraft that helped form the bedrock of the noughties post-punk revival. Several tunes have assumed classic status within the genre, with the best aged from youthful dissociation into monochrome maturity; their material is now cast in beefy, almost anthemic tones, spiked with the timbre of dark romance.

Gig review: Interpol at O2 Academy LeedsGig review: Interpol at O2 Academy Leeds
Gig review: Interpol at O2 Academy Leeds

That passage of time has carried over to their live performances too. Such anguished sentiments have always underpinned Interpol – just take Pioneer to the Falls, from 2007's Our Love to Admire, and the keening wistfulness it unfurls – but now, those emotions have burst forth to supplant their traditionally metronomic musicianship as their defining stage catharsis.

Wreathed in dry ice and crisply dressed in uniform black suits, there is something a little looser to the way Banks guides them forwards. Newer cuts, such as the hazy Fables, offer up atypical croons and longueurs that enhance the tauter favourites of their catalogue; Obstacle 1 builds towards its crescendo with an almost violent repression, while the macabre Evil, allegedly influenced by serial killer pair Fred and Rosemary West, judders forth to paradoxically drunken bedlam.

Next to the sun-kissed twilight skies outside the venue, such music could play as the antithesis of late-spring festival season flavours; a periodically nihilistic trip towards a breed of Manhattan nostalgia few in attendance ever experienced. But that tenor is now tempered with something more universally appealing too. Roland punctures the air with a chorus of cheers; Slow Hands sparks an outbreak of almost genteel middle-aged moshers at the close. It seems Interpol might just be growing older with a beloved grace.

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