On a cold December night in 2002, the buzzing New York City rock band Interpol performed at a Philadelphia venue called Gasoline — a garage-turned-nightclub that has since reverted to its former life as a garage. It was the band’s third gig in the city, but its first following the release of its celebrated debut album Turn On The Bright Lights, so the room was packed, the energy was high, and the musicians were on fire.
Twenty-two years and one day since that show, Interpol once again found itself in that very neighborhood, playing a block north and another block east at the vastly more cavernous Franklin Music Hall. It’s the Philadelphia room they’ve headlined the most in the decades since (going back to its previous life as the Electric Factory), it’s generally the size room they play in Philly (minus a 2011 stadium gig at The Linc opening for U2), and the occasion — the final date of the band’s Antics 20th anniversary tour — once again packed the house with enthralled devotees.
The night got under way with an in-your-face performance by the Berklee-formed, Brooklyn-based experimental dance outfit Model/Actriz. Mixing densely jarring noise rock tones and raw rhythmic energy with snappy post-punk grooves (and occasional metal-adjacent shrieks), the band was entertaining, but defiantly confrontational, in their sound as well as their presentation. Vocalist Cole Haden raced about in an unhinged frenzy, and then between songs one and two gave the crowd static for not dancing, saying this audience “clearly” was seeing them for the first time and insisting that they move. Haden grew up in Delaware, and maybe it’s been a while since he’s spent any real time here, but berating a Philly audience is never the move if their energy isn’t where you want it to be. Thankfully he changed tactics halfway through the set, broke the fourth wall, and dove in the crowd to dance with them. It’s a move Haden seems to be known for, but it successfully turned the temperature up, and trailing a comically lengthy microphone cable behind, he waltzed across the venue, ascended the balcony stairs, and made an about-face turn, serenading a much more energized room from above.
Model/Actriz | photo by John Vettese for WXPN
As performers, the members of Interpol were not nearly this kinetic. But they didn’t have to be — this is a band oriented around mood and vibe, down to the deep red glow of the scrim it played behind as “Next Exit” heralded the start of the show. Once the scrim dropped, low backlighting cast the musicians in silhouette for the bulk of the night’s remainder. The look was haunting, and the band’s oft-dirgey music certainly had those undertones, but this being a celebration of its sophomore album, it also had a pulse and vivacity to it. Compared to Bright Lights, which was bathed in mercurial and abstract atmospheres, Antics is a record from the heart and the hips. It found Interpol flirting with danceable rock, mixing disco-adjacent grooves into its sound; it found frontman Paul Banks dropping his dour facade (lyrically, anyway) and opening up. Interpol’s early-aughties NYC contemporaries The Strokes wrote songs that were playfully hedonistic and misanthropic; the band they were most compared to early on (Joy Division, mostly thanks to Banks’ deep baritone) was soaked in its own era’s existential malaise. In contrast, Interpol stood out, on Antics in particular, by unabashedly being romantics.
The word “love” appears 27 times in the album’s lyric sheet; related words like “baby” and “sweetheart” are often in the mix as well. And though they’re not always in service of a rosy and positive view of interpersonal relationships — “C’mere” is full of scorn and regret, “Take You On A Cruise” has images of tears and desperation — these lyrics are unguarded and packed with emotion. “We all hold hands, can’t we all hold hands, when we make new plans?” Is a yearning line from “Not Even Jail” that the couple-filled crowd sang along to with gusto. The same happened on “Slow Hands”: “you make me want to pick up a guitar and celebrate the myriad ways I love you.” And the refrain of “Public Pervert”: “swoon, baby, starry nights / May our bodies remain / You move with me, I’ll treat you right, baby / May our bodies remain.” The connection these songs forged with post-millennial twentysomethings was undeniable, to the point where it wasn’t to difficult to scan the Franklin Music Hall crowd and find parents that brought their teenage-and-under children to the concert with them — Interpol as a family concert destination was truly a wild thing to comprehend.
Interpol | photo by John Vettese for WXPN
Following a full-album performance of Antics, Interpol took five, and returned for a second set of highlights from across the rest of their catalog. Bright Lights and 2007’s Our Love To Admire were the most represented — “Rest My Chemistry” sounded thrilling, and “Obstacle 1” brought the main set to a bracing close — though other eras of the band’s catalog packed a punch as well, like “My Desire” from 2014’s El Pintor. With original drummer Sam Fogarino on medical leave, Chris Broome handily filled in, joining touring keys player Brandon Curtis and bassist Brad Truax to back Banks and founding guitarist Daniel Kessler. Last night being the final gig of the tour, the otherwise-reticent Banks took a moment at show’s end to effusively thank the crew (“they do it all”), as well as the band’s label and management reps in the house, and its fans. With Interpol’s calendar empty for the foreseeable future, it’s unclear when they’ll be back in formation. But when it happens, the love will doubtless still be here.