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9.1
69147
9.1 |
A.V. Club
Interpol is reborn—older, wiser, and learning to take each crisis in stride
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9.0
69132
9.0 |
musicOMH
El Pintor is sleek, minimalist and brilliantly realised, and is the band’s best work since Antics
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9.0
68954
9.0 |
Drowned In Sound
Their belief regained and creative juices flowing at a rate of knots, Interpol have delivered their finest record in a decade with El Pintor
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8.5
69021
8.5 |
The Line Of Best Fit
It’s dense. It’s hard. It’s easy. It’s a fresh new face and an old friend
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8.0
69017
8.0 |
DIY
It’s a characteristic success and a massive delight to the fans that their return as a three-piece yields something as excellent as ‘El Pintor’. The band that could once do no wrong returns, doing a hell of a lot of things exactly right
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8.0
69073
8.0 |
PopMatters
This is a band confident in their direction forward. There is no traditional song structure here, no catchy, sing-along hooks or powerful instrumental breaks
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8.0
68955
8.0 |
The Skinny
Expansive and texturally advanced, and arguably their strongest outing since that lauded debut, this is a welcome second coming
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8.0
68956
8.0 |
Mojo
Playing entirely to their strengths the sum total is unmistakably, and welcomingly, Interpol. Print edition only
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8.0
68957
8.0 |
Q
As the world keeps spinning around them they subtly shift into hypnotic new places. Print edition only
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8.0
68953
8.0 |
NME
Ultimately, 'El Pintor' serves as a sharp jolt off the path of steady decline that the band's New York peers like The Strokes and The Walkmen have been on since the late noughties
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8.0
69004
8.0 |
The Guardian
Finds Interpol returning to the sleek, monochrome post-punk that caused such an impact in the early 2000s
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8.0
69006
8.0 |
Evening Standard
From the moment the startlingly assertive opener, All the Rage Back Home, snaps into action there’s a renewed spring in their step
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8.0
69232
8.0 |
Loud And Quiet
It’s a viciously good return to form
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8.0
69181
8.0 |
Slant Magazine
Though Interpol still traffics almost exclusively in melancholy, it's not necessarily a depressive affliction—or experience, for that matter
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8.0
69473
8.0 |
The Quietus
They sound like a band honing in on their skill rather than overhauling what they do, and in the grand scheme of their career this feels a timely release
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7.7
69236
7.7 |
Earbuddy
Many artists have attempted make a decent comeback record this year and El Pintor is one of the most impressive sonic turnarounds so far and it is because the band isn’t afraid to go back to their roots of crafting clean polished post-punk songs
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7.5
69200
7.5 |
Pretty Much Amazing
f this LP marks your first exposure to Interpol, you’ll likely see the messianic qualities that had the old-timers bedazzled the first time around
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7.5
68968
7.5 |
Consequence Of Sound
Interpol sound more connected to each other as players and songwriters, the result of making music in closer quarters and in the midst of unfamiliar footing
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7.0
68952
7.0 |
Clash
As an exercise in getting back to where you once belonged, ‘El Pintor’ is highly successful
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7.0
68958
7.0 |
Uncut
The riffs now have a jazzy circuitousness to them but the supple rhythm section controls things nicely, both result in lunatic climaxes. Print edition only
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7.0
68963
7.0 |
FasterLouder
El Pintor is muscular and loping, but it remains more refinement than rebirth
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7.0
69255
7.0 |
All Music
Even if it doesn't have as much of the jagged need that sparked their best work, El Pintor is Interpol's most consistent album since Antics
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7.0
69186
7.0 |
Rolling Stone
There's no missing the excellence of songs
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6.5
69193
6.5 |
Paste Magazine
Ultimately more pleasurable than it is painful, enough of a distraction to recall how important Interpol seemed at one time and how they can still pull off the illusion of importance after all these years
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6.0
69189
6.0 |
State
Overall, you can’t help but feel that on El Pintor, the very name just a reshuffling of what was already in place, Interpol have settled into a holding pattern
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6.0
69012
6.0 |
Exclaim
While El Pintor is no Turn on the Bright Lights or Antics, the record finds Interpol climbing out of their mediocre rut, slowly but surely
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6.0
69019
6.0 |
Under The Radar
El Pintor is an Interpol album that does exactly what it says on the tin, with no alarms and no surprises
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6.0
69061
6.0 |
The Observer
All coiled, icy riffs and sonorous vocals
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6.0
69070
6.0 |
No Ripcord
El Pintor isn’t a rekindling of old fires, more so a chilled, mutual acceptance from a band that is letting things roll as smoothly as can be
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5.9
69072
5.9 |
Pitchfork
Interpol don’t sound as much like Interpol as they do a band that really wants to be Interpol
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