The Paranoid Style - The Interrogator

Charles Hughes on a great new rock 'n' roll album

On “The Ballad of Pertinent Information (Turn It On),” the third track on the new album from The Paranoid Style, singer-songwriter Elizabeth Nelson offers a poignant invitation over clipped, descending chords: “Turn it on, let’s dance until something awful happens.” It’s a fitting thesis for The Interrogator, a rock ‘n’ roll party that doubles as a collection of portraits of characters at the end of their ropes and reaching for new ones. Blending the textured precision of Nelson’s lyrics with the band’s melodic rumble, The Interrogator is a full-on blast, with track after track of power-drive words and arrangements that leap out of the mix and stick to the wall like a pinned-up flyer or graffiti scrawl. Elsewhere in that same song Nelson also claims “I’m not in the pleasure business.” That may be true in the specific context, but – in the larger meta-context of The Interrogator’s joyous racket – it seems almost absurd. But that’s surely the point: Even as it wrestles with themes of edgy ambivalence, this is a deeply pleasurable rock ‘n’ roll record.

The Interrogator comes in slamming. The title track kicks off with acoustic thrum and ““Highway 61 Revisited” whistle before going full speed ahead with a hurtling Nelson vocal and Rockpile-recalling boogie. Her words spill out so quickly that it becomes all you can do to catch some witty, punchy phrases before they disappear—like the Chuck Berry wink of “Sure as you’re born, they bought me a short black dress.” But the sound’s more than enough to keep you hangin’ on: The handclaps-and-saxophones rush carries “The Interrogator” as the Paranoid Style motorvate down the same sonic expressway to your heart that Berry built and followers like Dave Edmunds sped down to such effect. Berry’s legacy further comes through thanks to stabbing electric guitar from new band addition Peter Holsapple – co-founder of the mighty dB’s, affiliate of R.E.M. and Hootie & The Blowfish, and lifelong purveyor of pure pop for now people – and the big-swing rhythms of guitarist Timothy Bracy, bassist William Corrin, and drummer Jon Langmead.

Langmead’s strut also powers the second track, “I Love The Sound of Structured Class.” As David noted here a while back, the song also features “Holsapple [shredding] atop a big-beat groove that sounds sourced from Eliminator,” with Nelson “[dropping] bon mots like bombs.” The clever Nick Lowe homage in the title is another indication of how, to my ears, The Interrogator is in most obvious call-and-response with the Stiff Records crew, whose bash-and-crash blend of pub, punk, and pop helped define a mischievous and deceptively literate side of the British New Wave. Many tracks sound like they could have emerged from that sweaty, boozy would-be hit factory: the snapping Bo Diddley beat and art-student title of “Styles Make Fights;” the Brinsley-Schwarz-or-Steve-Nieve-esque organ (played expertly by keyboardist William Matheny) of “Print The Legend;” or the squall of “That Drop Is Steep” with its duetting siren guitars and echo-drenched vocal. “Something about rock and roll makes me nervous for the future,” Nelson admits here in a particularly good demonstration of the album’s juxtapositions of sound and sentiment. “Something about rock and roll makes it difficult to breathe.” (Later, the music “makes me feel defensive” and “affects the friends I keep,” two things that somehow affirm the sonic approach even as they undercut it.) She pulls a similarly layered trick on “Are You Loathsome Tonight?,” which pairs its cheeky title with what may be The Interrogator’s most purely lovely song, with tender slide guitar and graceful piano dancing with Nelson’s vocals. Make no mistake: When voicing this character, she damn sure sounds lonesome tonight.

Nelson’s words are justifiably becoming her trademark, whether on record or in her other job as one of our best music critics. (Speaking of side gigs, Jon Langmead just published a fantastic book about the early history of professional wrestling.) But those words wouldn’t mean anywhere near as much without the effectiveness of her singing. Another example of this, along with another great song title, is “Bad Day for the Group Chat,” a jangly college-rock rush that bops into full bloom by a saxophone-driven third verse. (This is one of several tracks animated by Matt Douglas’ horn work.) But still, sure as you’re born, there’s something awful happening here even as we dance: Nelson bemoans an “insane pantomime” and confronts a world where “Money talks, then money laughs.” Nelson’s crisp and conversational delivery, especially when paired with empathetic harmonies and the constant support of her bandmates, means that she’s always carrying these razor-wit observations from page to ear with expert agility. Everyone from Chrissie Hynde to Graham Parker is in here, and that’s just drawing names from the immediate Stiff Records orbit.

As both singer and songwriter, Nelson is also in conversation with Phil Lynott. She’s named him as a favorite and influence, and the connection gets even more specific: The late Irish great hung out some with those Stiff Records rascals, and his Thin Lizzy legacy seems a particularly strong influence on “The Return of the Molly Maguires.” Sure, part of that is the Irish history of the subject and the flip of “the boys are back in town,” both of which Lynott would surely admire. But it’s more in the vivid storytelling and wide-open sound that marked so much of Lynott’s work – both with Thin Lizzy and solo – as well as the literal and figurative notes of melancholy, struck here by a piano that shifts from pounding along on the verses to a striking single tone that rings out at the end.

Matheny’s piano also drives “The Formal” – recalling Joe Jackson and featuring some of Nelson’s most evocative and strange lyrics, including a Lynchian promise that “we’ll settle this at the formal” – and the closing “The Findings.” The album’s only slow song, “The Findings” brings washes of piano and guitar around Nelson as she sings some lyrics that are simultaneously devastating and funny – “You’d be the scariest thing in The Shining, and those are the findings” – as well as some that are just plain devastating: “The youth movement always prevails, and then the youth movement always fails.” A welcome denouement, the track brings this fiery rocket of a record down for a safe landing.

Nelson’s final declaration of “And these are the findings” is fitting summation for an album that brims with great lyrical and musical ideas. She promises on the edgy “Last Night In Chickentown,” which pairs a desperate lyric with a thunderous rhythm that tracks the path from Hitsville, U.S.A. to “Hitsville U.K.,” that “I’m taking everything that’s mine…I leave no regrets.” And yes, as with elsewhere, she’s in character and pulling this line out isn’t entirely doing it a service. (Especially since it strips out the fun of decoding the songs’ enigmatic storylines.) But this is also such a core rock ‘n’ roll tenet, a claim of space and significance, that it also feels like another one of those thesis statements. And the Paranoid Style do a bang-up, house-rocking job supporting that thesis throughout The Interrogator. The person in that earlier song is right: Something awful may happen – maybe sooner than later – but I’ll keep dancing until then. So turn it on. And turn it up.

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