Once upon a time not so long ago, it looked as though Interpol might have made a break for the big leagues.
2007's Our Love to Admire charted 2nd in the UK album charts, and the consequent tour included shows at Madison Square Garden, two nights at Alexandra Palace, and the band's first major European festival headline dates.
Then came the much debated coda to the early years of Interpol's chart-bothering days, which saw founder member and bassist Carlos Dengler quit following the recording of the band's fourth album. Some people thought a tour with a rotating cast of bassists was the end of the road, but 5th album El Pintor hinted at a band revitalised in their new space as a trio.
Having made it through 50 hours in a snowstorm in upstate New York without eating each other last winter, and a slightly more recent European tour, the band pitch up in London in something of a confident mood.
The band strut onto the stage and plough straight into Say Hello to the Angels, before quickly following up with the surprisingly more powerful Anywhere. Nevertheless, things take a few songs to get going, be it adjustment to a muddy sound system or a crowd yet to fully bounce.
The dress code remains as ever, although touring bassist Brad Truax breaks the suit and boot dress code the rest of the men on stage wear with a leather jacket. He also gets the attention four tunes in, when the band deploy the calling card of Evil. This is certainly the best way to get the crowd onto their dancing shoes.
At the least the crowd's plans of feeling comfortable in their dancing shoes comes after guitarist Daniel Kessler, who demonstrates nicely fleet-footed footwork all over the stage and all without missing a chord. By contrast, singer Paul Banks keeps his focus on delivering his vocals, which mainly waver within his familiar baritone but sees a few forays into other tones - most notably on My Blue Supreme.
As ever, the lyrics are vague, but at their best provide firm and powerful yell-along choruses, such as on the rollicking new tune My Desire.
For the most part however, this is a more subtle crowd than those that turned up to mosh their way through the set at Brixton Academy last year. There's a section of bouncing people, but for the most part, listening intently seems to be the goal of the crowd - particularly on the new material.
Some things are worth this. The intense drive of new single Everything is Wrong is a fine driver, before breathaking melancholic anthem Pioneer to the Falls fills the space in sublime fashion. At times, the latter has a moment when the crowd is transfixed by a simple pairing of vocals and tambourine.
For the most part the band don't reinvent the wheel. When done with an impressively megawatt-burning display, Lights ends in an impressively restructured ending. But this proves exception rather than rule.
Nevertheless, the audience is still lapping it up, and a one-two-three of Narc, Not Even Jail and Slow Hands at the close of the main set is an exceptional conclusion to the first part of proceedings. It certainly caps off an impressive conclusion, with the band having built up a head of steam following the earlier sonic problems.
As is the way, that's not the end of proceedings, and after a few moments, the slide guitar bounce of All The Rage Back Home works up a head of steam.
Despite these pleasant new ones, a fair number of the crowd will be in the mood for tunes from the debut disc Turn on the Bright Lights. The encore sees the band shimmer through NYC before blasting through a titanic PDA, before a surprise second encore takes place when the band have a final run through of Untitled to wrap things up.
In all, there is plenty to admire for the proceedings that have taken place. The band's performances remain admirably tight and proficient, and a lot of the songs still maintain the pulling power that have drawn people to their music.
Yet while there was a lot going on, and more went right than wrong, it still lacked the fizz and lustre of some of Interpol's previous visits to the United Kingdom, and in particular the previous March' Brixton concert.
Nevertheless, the New Yorkers still bring enough with them to suggest that they remain expert players, and should be a top draw for whichever festivals they might find themselves at during the summer.
3.5/5
Opening for the New Yorkers were Californian band HEALTH, who provided a slightly unusual counterpoint to the headline band. This avant-garde rock deconstruction had some nice ideas conceptually, but tended to drown in incoherent synths, hidden vocals and repetitive grooves. Nevertheless, the mountain of hair on bass added some colour to proceedings.
