17.30, Other Stage

Thankfully, the mood is now far removed from the jaunty optimism and misty-eyed nostalgia of earlier, and in that respect at least the stage is set perfectly for the arrival of INTERPOL. The clement weather, though, is rather less conducive to their appearance, and it’s no wonder that vocalist / guitarist Paul Banks, suited and booted like the rest of the band, complains about the heat. In fact, it’s almost surprising he doesn’t go on to complain about the exposure to sunlight… Nevertheless, ‘Untitled’ kicks things off in fine fashion, the gloom descending metaphorically if not literally and transporting us away to the dimly-lit streets and subways of New York. They plough on through the majority of fantastic debut album Turn On The Bright Lights – the likes of ‘PDA’, ‘Obstacle 1’ and ‘Roland’ all masterful slabs of Joy-Division-meets-The-Strokes near-perfection. But it’s album highlight ‘NYC’ that perhaps inevitably steals the show – dramatically grandiose and elegant in the way it unfolds, the song comes across rather like a slightly darker OK Computer era Radiohead. Like Mogwai a day earlier, Interpol triumph in spite rather than because of the circumstances.