Julian Plenti Is ... Skyscraper (Bonus Track Version)

So the Interpol frontman takes time off from his main band to record a solo album that mostly sounds like an adventurous Interpol album. Julian Plenti (a.k.a. Paul Banks) uses his Ian Curtis-Joy Division-inspired vocal delivery to bring about the same core of eerie isolation. His voice is more expansive, but that’s what years of singing to a carefully contrived aesthetic will do. Banks loosens up vocally, but musically he’s every bit as high tech as the next technologically advanced studio hound. The acoustic guitars that begin “Skyscraper” are not to be left alone and as the tense, hypnotizing riff builds to a crescendo, the keyboards add menace, and the spoken words barely leak out amongst the powerful walls of sound. “Games for Days” is more to the point, an insistent guitar-based new-wave pop tune updated for the new millennium. “Madrid Song” uses found sounds, messy keyboard lines and loose melodies for a feeling that the end of the night is upon us.