The Rapture: Echoes and Interpol: Turn on the Bright Lights

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

We'll review these two bands together not just because they're from the same place and time (New York's newly hip rock scene, 2003), but they sound like they should be from quite another (Manchester 1980-something).

To generalise, the sharp-suited men of Interpol would seem to want to be Joy Division by way of the Smiths, while indie-rock scruffs the Rapture prefer something that marries New Order to Happy Mondays and adds a heavy dollop of the Cure with it.

For Interpol, that means enough gloom, doom and intensity - care of those grey guitars and Paul Bank's sad mumble of a voice - to take their particular brand of retro-Anglophilia dead seriously. That's even when they're sounding like dead ringers for Echo and the Bunnymen (yes them, too, on Obstacle 1, the slow NYC, and Leif Erikson), the Smiths (Say Hello to the Angels) or rewriting Joy Division's She's Lost Control more than once among the 12 tracks.

Despite an approach which suggests their tailored sleeves must be crumpled by wearing all those influences, Interpol are still arresting. Especially if you own the same old albums they do.

Although the Rapture's magpie tendencies aren't as pronounced, their approach still feels more self-conscious and mannered. It's also hard to get past the similarity of singer Luke Jenner's voice to the Cure's Robert Smith - you almost expect him to burst into A Forest or Hanging Garden on the goth-but-groovy opener Olio.

Elsewhere, on this debut produced by house duo DFA, there are nods to the spiky funk of Gang of Four (House of Jealous Lovers, Echoes), New Order (I Need Your Love borrows a keyboard figure from Blue Monday), and the early 90s rave-rock of the Happy Mondays (on Sister Saviour).

Undoubtedly, it gives Big Apple scene-sters a band they can dance to but the Rapture's grab-bag approach makes them the lesser of these two Mancunian candidates.

The Rapture: Echoes

(Herald rating: * *)

Label:Vertigo


* * *


Interpol: Turn on the Bright Lights

(Herald rating: * * *)

Label: Matador