interpol really are sellouts

"depths" is right. The depths of derivitaveness and abject clilché.

about interpol?
that's a good question...

hopefully, no one @ this point.
carlos d, perhaps?

me, nah....thanks.

-- okok (oko...), October 1st, 2005. (later)

Well, they must have sold at least 30,000-40,000 in the UK alone, because the album just missed the top 20.

Whos next, the departure?

done and done!!
and they sold out, too...
but, only people who REALLY like them are going to imaginary shows, they know all the imaginary words, and know all the imaginary dance moves they've made up!! it's, like, Interpol but without all that craptastical "music" they make!! instead, they use gtrs and drums!!!
it's like an avante-imaginary scene in my head!!!!

but, without all that fucking pseudo-mussed hair and bo-ho-bullshit clothes! it's great!!!
did i mention the temp's always 77 degrees?
yeah, slight breeze outta the north...

Buy Interpol prints!

http://photo.conn75.com/music/interpol_171204.php

Ta.

And to think some people have a problem with Indymedia!

1. GO TO BED

2. KILL YOURSELF

by "1997" I assume you mean "1985"

Antics will always be a better album than Bright Lights, you buncha sad indie boys

(/zing)

no, they stubled upon the formula in July, 1996.
they apparently liked it so much they continued it's use.

so, to answer yr question NO, but they did eventually get to suckin some ass!
whereas, SOME bands have that formula down pat from Day 1.

Now are you talking about Corgan, Flowers or the Interpol guy? Or indeed, 90% of music?

they stubled upon the formula

I like the idea of stubbling upon the formula, aka the George Michael scenario.

the two albums are practically identical except for the tempo you ninnies

Oh, and using tortured-undergrad-isms like "catering to the mainstream" mean fuck-all here. Same 'em for your dorm room or your local coffee shop.

it's all rawk n roll.
or so i hear...

and for the record, if the Killers or Interpol could even manage a Geek USA or Cherub Rock, hell, even a Starla or Bury Me, i'd change my mind on em, pronto!

that said, i doubt that'll happen. not enough LSD.

Great screen name, by the way. No jokes. (Y'know, I've never even tasted Nutrament, what's it like?)

Truer words never spoken! "Evil" nowhere near as good as any of 'em! Etc. etc. I've been down this road...

Not to kick a downed someone, but what does watered-down music sound like?

the depth and vision of the debut and instead turned to easy, accessible, yet temporary pop hooks...the former is obviously much more difficult than the latter to create

What's your evidence for the last assertion?

An artist might actually water down his music so he can sell more albums!?!?!

And what's your evidence for this ever happening? Examples welcome.

Stop making fun of this band who likes my dad!

(GOD, i need sleep and need to grab a shuttle bus soon!)

DMB.
or
DMB underwater.

and doesnt that one dude have aids or something?

You know what's really an undergrad-ism? Being so goddamned solipsistic that you can't just simply say "I didn't like their second album as much as their first one".

oh the humantity...

It happens all the time, Space. Artists do it to piss YOU off. They know that you would hate having to go to a concert with someone who wasn't as enlightened as you sitting right there next to you! YOU, among the seething masses! Can you believe it?

Artists should all eat their own bodies, because money makes them ruin YOUR life.

the two albums are practically identical except for the tempo you ninnies

Bingo!

And it was no. 15 in the US, so it must be over 100 000 or 200 000 worldwide.
And that's a good thing.

bill cosby explains the arcade fire:

http://stillepost.ca/boards/index.php?topic=567.0

You see, the kids today when they listen to the rock music, they like to listen to the bands that nobody else listens to. Because you see, they like to tell their friends "I listen to this band, and you should listen to the band, but I listened to them first," you see. And then they run around and dance to the bands, waving their arms and legs around all over the place, and then their friends say "Hey, that sounds like a good band, I'm going to dance around too," and they're all dancing to the bands, you see.

But then the kids, they say "I don't like the band anymore. I liked the band when nobody liked the band, so now everybody likes the band but me," you see. And they tell their friends "Okay, you have to stop, because the band is no good." And the friends, they listen to the music, and it sounds just the same as it did before, you see. But the friends, they say "Okay, you tell me that this band is no good, so what I am going to do is I'm not going to like this band."

My only son, I love him dearly, he's a good boy. He comes home with two tickets to see the Arcade Fire, which is the name of the rock group, you see. And he says to me "Dad, I'm going to see the Arcade Fire. I love the Arcade Fire. Let's all go and see the Arcade Fire." And then the boy, who is usually a bright child, turns on the radio and he hears the Arcade Fire song, and he says "Oh, I don't want to see the Arcade Fire, I don't like the Arcade Fire," you see.

And the song... I listened to the song, and I said "What has changed about the song? Why don't you like the song anymore?" And the boy said to me "I don't like the song. The song is on the radio, and what I have to do is I can't go to the show." And I said "Is there something wrong with the radio? I paid for that radio so you could dance around in your room to the Arcade Fire." And the boy told me "I can't listen to the song anymore. The song was better before they sold out," he said to me.

Because the kids, you see, they have the brain damage. When they say something is bad, that means it's good, you see.

they used to be SO good...

"not to kick a downed someone but what does watered down music actually sound like?"
downed? yaa, Banana Nutrament really floored me with those witty rebuttals, I'm almost ashamed to show my face around this Critic Fashionista! It sounds like this:

Examples of artists who have produced albums that sacrificed their former artistic integrity to appeal to a wider audience:
Nas, Method Man, Devendra Banhart (slightly), INTERPOL, Aerosmith, Badly Drawn Boy, Paul McCartney, Talib Kweli, Andrew W.K. (just kidding), Suede, Mos Def, Phil fucking Collins, Eric Clapton, Common, The Neptunes, Incubus (though their earlier merit is only arguable), Korn (likewise), Weezer, U2, Sting, Manic Street Preachers....

I could go on and on, but you, struggling music critics, are obviously vastly superior to me in your knowledge of opinion so how dare me think otherwise...

Now that is just sick. Their popularity will soon fall again.

You don't like the new Interpol as much as the last one. Fine. Why can't you accept that other people like it more because it sounds better to them? Are you saying that people who like different things to you are deluded in some way?

true, I should have said "sacrificed their former artistic integrity and appealed to a wider audience" because, you're right, that this was their intention is speculation....regardless, my point was that their craft suffered with fame and success...and for McCartney it wasn't for a "wider" audience, possibly, but I still feel his craft suffered when he went on his own, maybe because he was trying to appeal to mainstream audiences moreso than his own artistic integrity (the way I feel Lennon did on his first 2 solo albums)..and I believe John Lennon refers to this in "How do you sleep?"...

"You don't like the new Interpol as much as the last one. Fine. Why can't you accept that other people like it more because it sounds better to them? Are you saying that people who like different things to you are deluded in some way?"

See how it works is: I give my opinion, you give yours....so, anytime someone argues a point on this board they are also implying that everyone else is deluded? My tone was a response to the snide remarks directed at me because I dared to imply that Interpol became weaker with fortune and fame...if you like the new, more accessible version of Interpol, fine! Doesn't mean that the "money weakens talent" argument can never be said, that it is merely coffee table banter...its dangerous to think along those lines...the same way labels such as Rockist are misleading, the tendency on this board to rule out certain lines of argument merely because they've been overused is sad..such overtheorizing of music is irrational and leads to people on this board rationalizing Britney Spears...I'm just trying to save your kids

Space, you may not be a student lamo, but you are certainly acting like one.

Oh, and "artistic integrity" is right up there with "organic" on my list of Pretentious Words & Phrases Used When Bullshitting About Music.

sooo OTM. what does this mean?

When used as a virtue term, ‘integrity’ refers to a quality of a person's character; however, there are other uses of the term. One may speak of the integrity of a wilderness region or an ecosystem, a computerized database, a defense system, a work of art, and so on. When it is applied to objects, integrity refers to the wholeness, intactness or purity of a thing—meanings that are sometimes carried over when it is applied to people. A wilderness region has integrity when it has not been corrupted by development or by the side-effects of development, when it remains intact as wilderness. A database maintains its integrity as long as it remains uncorrupted by error; a defense system as long as it is not breached. A musical work might be said to have integrity when its musical structure has a certain completeness that is not intruded upon by uncoordinated, unrelated musical ideas; that is, when it possesses a kind of musical wholeness, intactness and purity.

Integrity is also attributed to various parts or aspects of a person's life. We speak of attributes such as professional, intellectual and artistic integrity. However, the most philosophically important sense of the term ‘integrity’ relates to general character. Philosophers have been particularly concerned to understand what it is for a person to exhibit integrity throughout life. Acting with integrity on some particularly important occasion will, philosophically speaking, always be explained in terms of broader features of a person's character and life. What is it to be a person of integrity? Ordinary discourse about integrity involves two fundamental intuitions: first, that integrity is primarily a formal relation one has to oneself, or between parts or aspects of one's self; and second, that integrity is connected in an important way to acting morally, in other words, there are some substantive or normative constraints on what it is to act with integrity. How these two intuitions can be incorporated into a consistent theory of integrity is not obvious, and most accounts of integrity tend to focus on one of these intuitions to the detriment of the other. A number of accounts have been advanced, the most important of them being: (i) integrity as the integration of self; (ii) integrity as maintenance of identity; (iii) integrity as standing for something; (iv) integrity as moral purpose; and (v) integrity as a virtue. These accounts are reviewed below. We then examine several issues that have been of central concern to philosophers exploring the concept of integrity: the relations between types of integrity, integrity and moral theory, and integrity and social and political conditions.

in·teg·ri·ty P Pronunciation Key (n-tgr-t)
n.
Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code.
The state of being unimpaired; soundness.
The quality or condition of being whole or undivided; completeness.

what does an artist's hypothetical ethical virtue have to do with what we're talking about here: MUSIC????? and enjoyment of it?

More to the point, I'm a musician too, and I absolutely despise discussing music in terms
like "creative purity" and "artistic craft".

(which STILL wouldn't change the situation - if the compromised, in-it-for-the-money music that came out of it was any good, I'd still listen to it (unlike crap music by artists with their artistic integrity intact)

Christ on a crutch, don't make me laugh.

"crafted a few decent songs - such as Narc and Evil - though nothing that comes close to NYC or PDA or Obstacle 1)"

They're.the.same.fucking.songs.

I have no way of knowing an artist's hypothetical ethical virtue...however, I can attempt to ascertain whether or not an artist has compromised his work to meet public/industry expectations..obviously this is subjective, as everything I've argued...this is what makes music so difficult to evaluate...however, I don't think its far-fetched to say that an artist's strengths often are connected to their unique, uncompromising ability to reflect themselves into song...and I also don't think its far-fetched or naive to evaluate these strengths from album to album..and possibly come up with the idea that these uncompromising, unique strengths have been discarded or made inactive because they were felt to be too difficult or unnatural for mainstream audiences

This whole discussion seems to be taking place in some Twilight Zone where an artist chooses a slightly smaller reverb plate and suddenly it's an ethical issue.

An artist's strenghts have fuck-all to do with uncompromising abilites to reflect themselves. Writing good songs is a "strength." Period.

All you people look at me like I’m a little girl.
Well did you ever think it be okay for me to step into this world.

Always saying little girl don’t step into the club.
Well I’m just tryin’ to find out why cause dancing’s what I love.

Space, no one is going to engage you even half-seriously if you keep spouting idiocy. Your whole goddamned argument is held together with staples and duct tape.

Alfred's dead-on here - if Antics were just the sound of an amplified vacuum cleaner, it'd still be superior to Bright Lights just for the absence of this sophomoric, wince-inducing line

The problem is the way these groups are received and the people who celebrate groups like Interpol -- they include far more than "the kids," guys. Sure, some don't realize these weren't Interpol's innovations to begin with -- they never heard Joy Division, etc.

But the bigger issue is the misreading of what that means. Relying on someone else's template to the extent Interpol does means what Space Is the Place talked about--the artist's ability to reflect themselves into the song (a good point, btw)--becomes that much harder to achieve, though not impossible. And that's because so much of the song reflects someone else.

You saw this in the early 70's when even the best Beatles-facsimiles like Badfinger struggled mightily to forge an identity of their own. The result is usually a lot of really enjoyable music -- but that's about it. Until the artist either breaks out of that mold (as did Talk Talk w/ The Colour of Spring and Spirit of Eden) or really exploits a certain naturally-fitting element of the template (like Badfinger's Pete Hamm did w/ intensely desperate and personal lyrics), it won't transcend. It can't -- we've heard it before.

But that doesn't mean it's not fun to listen to. Hence, Interpol.

See, I have problems with the "but."

Some problems with artistic intention as a criterion for judging art: We can't know what those intentions were; the idea that art is a direct expression of an artist's intention is simplistic, ignoring the materials with which the artist works (language, instrumentation, record companies) that impact on the finished art; formal constraints (Bach writes great music within a set of tight rules).

Appreciating art is subjective, but reasoning about it needs some logical consistency.

Orbital

see, here's the meat of the arugement!! art and commerce collide and RARELY does it work out that they both come out winners. usually it's one or the other, seldom both. and if you make art with idea of commerce to follow, then yr doing it for the wrong reasons. oh, it's still 'art' but it's notion behind it that's the reason for the season! but, then again, maybe that's my idea of 'art' coming into play. i think that art's whatever you want it be, noise/harmony- flipsides of the same coin. now, which is gonna make more $$$? easy, harmony. but, which is more 'art'? noise? well, yeah...but it also takes some amount of creativity to make a harmony, too!

and here comes another part of the argument-
'better to toil in obsurrity and make great things some people love or be in the lime-light and make mediorce things that many people love'. the middle ground's the target, make enough to sustain and keep creating without having to "work" for a living. BUT, there are those among us that feel that 'just making it' isn't good enough and need MORE $$$. so,super-stardom's the target for many...

there's no winning the 'cred' aregument because it's a endless cycle of 'how do you define "selling out"?'.

me, i define it- is it acceped by a mass amount of people in a generic way, who don't care where/how it came about?

btw- i sold off all my indie cred, it was dropping in value. sell it while it's hawt...

Maybe The Strokes were important after all — just not the way some imagined at the time...

off by quite a few hundred thousand.

A strangely familiar number, that. Almost like I've read it somewhere aloud.

Organic: Discovery.
Not Organic: Human After All

I suppose organic an also be used interchangeably with "warm."

THEM: "Yeah, last week we saw Interpol with Bloc Party opening."
ME: "How were they?"
THEM: "Bloc Party were great and Interpol *SUCKED* -- it was embarrassing!"
ME (to self): "Heheheh."

But perhaps it was just their pizza.

Another word that's been beaten to death. Can't we just say "live-sounding"? That at least still has some meaning.

"Interpol's new album is totally live-sounding."

I saw them twice this year, and both times they were very proficient. But nothing more than that. Charisma and charm they have (had) not.

Chuck Berry: "No, I wouldn't have had time. The commercial value of songs is a great instigator."

And the appeal to metaphysical notions of aesthetics, particularly concerning INTERPOL of all bands, is absolutely ridiculous.

This thread has been fun to read.

and the fucking delightful hair,too...

...and this is being highly charitable. They were dull as dishwater live.

Except that not everything is.

But more to the point, you can't use "live-sounding" in a review without it coming across completely awkward.

Use as much flowery language as you want in a review, I'm talking about ILM.

Rembrandt to thread. Also Mozart.

-- monkeybutler (pdenniso...), October 4th, 2005."

ahh, but weren't they paid by royalty to create? kind of a 'keepin it in the court' sorta deal? i'm forgetting the real term right now, but there's a distinct difference there.

my point was this- if yr making any sort of "art" (loosely defined) w/ the notion that this will be something that makes you money, and NOT because it makes you feel something about said "art", then yr in dubious standings within any artistic scene...and "intergrity" is forefitted almost instantly.
now, if it does happen to garner acclaim and $$$, all the better, mind you. Warhol had is SO right by not putting ANY sort of 'feeling' into it, and letting you make it up/or taking it for what it was. much like "art", it's whatever you make of it. not so much what you make FROM it...

see, you get into such foggy places with this arguement...
such as 'how do you define success?', be it artistically or financially. the lines blur and people bend the "rules" all the time...

then there's always- who gives a fuck about art? let's dance!

So happy for Carlos D. Who would've thought he'd end up in three prestige pictures only 8 years after leaving Interpol to pursue acting? pic.twitter.com/aX5PkURfSK

— Nicky Smith (@MUGGER1992) January 18, 2018

i saw them play w The Cure a year before this thread started. luckily they hand't sold out yet so i was able to sneak away from the lawn seats and get a closer view for when The Cure played. amazing show

great revive