Stella was a diver, and she was always down. Just as Stella was always down, you can't keep Interpol away from angular guitars that flicker fleetingly about Paul Bank's wily baritone. Barricade was never going to sound like Martha Reeves fronting the dirty dubstep of Rusko, that's a given. Yet where Lights was a little melodramatic, a little too calm and calculated à la Our Love To Admire, Barricade hinges on the hulky, rooted bass lines of the now-expatriated Carlos D, recalling those beguiling pop sensibilities that fueled Antics, the coal that propelled the good ship Interpol into the lapping banks of the mainstream.
