Revision To A Dream

Interpol “Evil”

It used to seem that Paul Banks writing lyrics as though English was his third language was a drawback to Interpol, but over the time it’s now clear this is a feature and not a bug. This man is an expert craftsman of word salads. Some lines are so odd and awkward they make a song more memorable than it would be otherwise, while other lyrics are like Rorschach blots set to music. Banks’ best lines are highly evocative phrases that pop up out of nowhere at the most dramatic moment of a song, like when he belts out “you’re making people’s lives feel less private” midway through “Not Even Jail.” Banks knows that anything sounds intense and serious when sung in his harsh nasal tone, so he has a lot of license for both strangeness and ambiguity. Nonsense sounds better with a paranoid, bug-eyed tone.

I have to say all this because I need you to know that I understand what Banks is all about but still can’t hear “Evil” without my brain trying to sort out a narrative. Like, why is he addressing two different women here? Who is Rosemary, and who is Sandy? Do they know each other? When he asks Sandy “why can’t we look the other way,” is it because he’s cheating on her with Rosemary while he’s out on tour? Or maybe it’s the other way around, and he’s being wrongly accused? He sounds like such a manipulative cad, though. He barely seems to like either woman. Pretty much every line in “Evil” is vivid, but the feelings and settings and details resist all narrative structure. It scrambles memories and chops up moments on a timeline like if Alain Resnais wrote a post-punk song.

Interpol tend to get a lot of credit for creating atmosphere, but not as much for the nuance of their craft as songwriters. “Evil” is a brilliantly composed pop song, and makes the most of the band’s sharp and uptight dynamics while giving space for a loose swing that’s generally absent from their music. This is a song that could stand up well to all sorts of arrangements – it’s not hard to hear this remade as an elegant chamber pop song, or slowed down into more of a sludgy metal dirge. Banks’ verse melody is so lovely that you could play it a lot of ways, but it’s still hard to imagine topping their carefully calibrated balance of aloofness, dumb lust, confusion, and disdain.

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