Album Review: Interpol, Marauder

Interpol's Paul Banks has described the New York gloomsters sixth record as their most experimental. Here was a pronouncement sure to send a shudder through fans still haunted by the band's self-titled 2010 LP, a phantasmagorical curio that prowled about in search of something resembling a tune, but which quickly gave up. Were they really going one further than that oblique non-album?

Happily, Marauder doesn't quite live up to Banks's billing. Yes, it is very faintly conceptual, with the "Marauder" character flitting in and out of the lyrics. However, the songs were written as the group came off touring their debut album in its entirety (including a barnstorming turn at last year's Electric Picnic) and this trip down memory lane has juiced their batteries.

There's a hard-punch opening in 'If You Really Love Nothing', where Bank's subterranean vocals interweave with guitarist and songwriter Daniel Kessler's spectral architecture, the gothic fandango propelled by Sam Fogarino's impish drumming - the most palpable connection to the ghosts of New York's punk past.

Alarms may have sounded with the news that Mercury Rev / Flaming Lips regular David Fridmann was overseeing recording at his Buffalo, New York studio. As a conjurer of precision-tooled uncanniness he's unsurpassable - but is a whimsical pop wizard the person you want manning the desk for the outstanding indie brooders of the past 15 years?

The answer, it turns out, is vaguely in the affirmative. Following the rafter-raising kick-off, 'The Rover' is classic Interpol, with frosted riffs and bottom-of-deep-deep well vocals. Meanwhile, there's a whiff of their great lost anthem, 'Stella Was A Diver and She's Always Down' on 'Number 10'. Here, and elsewhere, Interpol prove they're still alternative pop's most intriguing moochers.

OUT NOW

Rating: 8/10