Take a bunch of anglophiles from Las Vegas, add a giant slab of retro cool, sprinkle a pinch of concentrated melody, boil under the midday sun and what is get is the sumptuous aural feast that is Hot Fuss. You should know them by now and even if you don’t recognise the name you’ve been whistling their tunes. This album certainly captures the zeitgeist, a band with influences clearly derived from the past adding their own spin and making it sound contemporary. Straight from the off the chords are big, forceful and while ‘Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine’ might not always hit the bullseye it colours itself in a neat Cure like embrace. ‘Smile You Mean It’ is similarly inclined with Brandon Flowers aping Robert Smith to great effect as the soaring keyboards reign supreme.

‘Somebody Told Me’ has been with us so long it almost seems as if it comes from a different age. Its underlying rhythm is hypnotic, the momentum quickly switching between frantic to downright epileptic. The production is raw often coming across as an energetic demo. ‘All The Things That I’ve Done’ is a lot more amenable to the casual listener. The riffs are round and welcoming and the chorus has an anthemic cigarette lighter in the air quality. It even boasts a line that could well be the Killers tag line ‘I got soul, but I'm not a soldier’. ‘Mr Brightside’ is as good as guitar driven pop gets. There is no faffing about as the song kicks off with the clearest of intentions. All the ingredients are present; the driving riff courtesy of David Keuning, the angular vocals and a chorus so wholesome you’ll feel like pinching its cheek. This is a modern classic that will be with us until we’re eating mashed bananas. ‘Everything Will Be Alright’ has the aforementioned goth’s angst in spades marking itself out as the only slow effort on the whole disc. Flowers vocals sound as if have been squeezed through a Korg after one too many pints of imported bitter.

There are so many highlights on ‘Hot Fuss’ it comes as a bit of a surprise to discover a fair sprinkle of clunkers along the way. ‘Andy, You’re A Star’ is one such, turgid guitars underpin a stop-start lyric delivery that should never have developed beyond the embryonic stage. ‘On Top’ is better but suffers under the weight of ordinary ideas. The Killers hold sway in the efficient delivery of a winning chorus but here a patient wait results in minimal reward. ‘Midnight Show’ also flatters to deceive, it blusters about, cutting an impressive silhouette but underneath the exterior beats a hollow yoke. Thankfully ‘Change Your Mind’ has none of these problems; this could pass for a winning Strokes effort. The guitars march persuasively, organs drone like well oiled engines and the clean beat tidies the package into a perfectly formed bundle of noise.

Hot Fuss is not a genetically cohesive unit, it falters from time to time but its working parts are practically superhuman. All in all it is a stellar debut spiked with several moments guaranteed to brighten up your day. There were better albums in 2004 but the Killers knack of knocking out drop dead gorgeous tunes has meant that this albums profile rose meteorically with each single release. Hot Fuss provides a good argument for downloader’s whose preference it is to pick-and-choose album tracks rather than buying the whole product.

Rating: 7/10

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Shortly after the release of the Streets' debut album Mike Skinner was asked about how he was faring writing his second album. His response was along the lines of ''it’s taken me all my life to write the songs for my first album; how can you expect me to repeat that in such a short space of time?''. A reasonable reaction, and one that goes some way to explaining the cliché that is the sophomore slump, though in Skinner’s case, I suspect he may have been overplaying his concern; it’s difficult to imagine anyone sweating over time restraints when they could deliver something as assured and cohesive as ‘A Grand Don’t Come For Free’ within two years. The same two years separate Interpol’s Antics from it’s older brother ‘Turn on the Bright Lights’, perhaps the only other debut of 2002 that matched the rapturous reception received by the Streets that year. This was a album of heartache and isolation, that could have you strutting to the stabbing guitars of Obstacle 1, and the next minute leave you breathless in the face of NYC’s cinematic slow-motion. ‘Antics’ arrival was met with a level of expectation no band should be burdened with. That’s the price, I guess, of putting your best foot forward, for leaving the starting blocks in a sprint. (God help The Arcade Fire.)

Hats off, then, to Interpol for keeping up the pace. They haven’t forayed far off the course they started on, but seem to have settled into a stride, or at least a more defined sound on ‘Antics’. Take ‘Evil’, two tracks in, that combines the elementary ingredients of a four-piece band to satisfying effect. It starts with a simple repeated Carlos D bass riff and adds Paul Banks’ distinctive low voice, now clearer than before and not buried deep in the mix, and then a basic drum beat. Unfussy, uncomplicated, the barre chords punch in at the bridge and do the dirty work at the chorus. There is little else, save for some piano notes that collide with the learner-friendly guitar solo. This may sound sparse, but the production is full-sounding, solid and weighty. It also may sound charmlessly efficient, but the key here is that this is simply a great tune, it carries the whole song effortlessly, and can hold its own without adding layers of strings or synthesizers, or going overboard on the reverb pedals. The prototype was the uncluttered ‘Leif Erickson’, one of the later tunes penned for ‘Turn on the Bright Lights’, but now less somber, more playful. The ‘Marquee Moon’ trick of holding back just about everything else during the guitar break could become an Interpol trademark on the back of this record, but the real upgrade is that at least half the songs here have a chorus you can dance to, in the case of ‘Evil’, like a possessed puppet. ‘I spent a life with no cellmate’ is a moving line, but it will get your feet moving too. ‘Evil’ is unstoppable, at once anguished and angry, not a crease in the suit, not a hair out of place. Really though, really, they should have called it ‘Rosemary’.

Several of the songs on ‘Antics’ follow this template plus-or-minus – ‘Narc’, ‘Slow Hands’, ‘Length of Love’, and Interpol’s poppiest moment to date ‘C’mere’, are churned out as if writing great tunes came effortlessly. ‘Take You on a Cruise’ slows the proceedings with some haunting, droning guitars, by turns tender (‘Baby it will be alright’) and thunderous (‘I am a scavenger between the sheets of union’). The real tour-de-force is the monolithic ‘Not Even Jail’, which starts with an almighty bang and proceeds to pound its way through five mirror-smashing minutes of intense, insistent guitars, then leaving a stunning two-string guitar break to fade out. Here’s a thing though: at times Interpol’s sound communicates more to the listener than the lyrics themselves. The frustration is palpable as Banks’ pleads ‘Can’t you feel the warmth of my sincerity?’ but there are times when the message is less clear. Okay, so ‘I’m subtle like a lion’s cage’ may hint at unvented anger, but really what he means by ‘I will bounce you on the lap of silence’ is quite beyond me. This was also a symptom of ‘Turn on the Bright Lights’. Songs are dotted with evocative snippets of loneliness and despair (‘Can’t you see what you’ve done to my heart and soul? This is a wasteland now’) but the tendency is towards the obscure and unfathomable, bordering on meaningless, with words seemingly randomly juxtaposed. ‘Combat salacious removal’, anyone? How can you explain following the lucid, literate ‘Now seasoned with health, two lovers walk a lakeside mile’ with the unintelligible ‘Try pleasing with stealth, rodeo…’ except to say they were looking for a rhyme? And don’t get me started on ‘I’m timeless like a broken watch.’

The music, however, compensates with yards to spare. On ‘Antics’, Interpol have come closer to a sound that is identifiably their own, distancing themselves from comparisons with that band. The shift between where they’ve come from and where they are is made apparent with the closing track ‘A Time To Be So Small, which takes a backward step to the brooding ‘Turn on the Bright Lights’, the mood gloomy, the vocals buried, the lyrics macabre. They’ve followed up an exquisitely atmospheric debut with a collection of tuneful, energetic songs. So perhaps this means the expectation will be compounded come their next release. But hey, who’s on trial?

Rating: 8/10

Tony Kelleher

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