The Interrogator is an ideal title for an album by Elizabeth Nelson’s hyper-literate band, the Paranoid Style. In her dual roles as a critic and singer-songwriter, Nelson prods and probes, putting the central tenets of rock’n’roll underneath an unforgiving spotlight. Her subjects often are artists whose tales have been told twice over, particularly on her lively X/Twitter account, where she offers tart insights on old warhorses from the Band, Van Morrison, and Prince. Her longer writing (including at Pitchfork) emphasizes her understanding of the inner workings of both songs and records, an intuition that manifests in the group she’s led alongside husband Timothy Bracy for over a decade. The Paranoid Style adhere to the gospel of three chords and overamplification; they’re true believers who don’t succumb to piety.
That long-running consistency gets a bit of a jolt on The Interrogator with the addition Peter Holsapple, a founding member of power-pop legends the dB’s (whose drummer Will Rigby also cameos here) and a onetime R.E.M. associate. Holsapple’s presence accentuates the Paranoid Style’s latent 1980s underground tendencies, adding a snappy restlessness that was absent on 2022’s For Executive Meeting. Placing The Interrogator within the lineage of college radio rock clarifies the Paranoid Style’s stance as cultural commentators—they linger on the fringe of the mainstream, understanding the form while questioning the intent. It also illuminates their kinetic appeal: “The Formal” roils to a jagged, dissonant clamor, “That Drop Is Steep” is propelled by a nagging, unnerving guitar, and “Print the Legend” has a descending riff directly reminiscent of the Pretenders’ “Back on the Chain Gang.”
Nelson can create vivid imagery with a limited number of words: Buried within “Print the Legend” is the pithy putdown, “They had a reasonable plan to make an ill-advised move.” Her true gift is cramming too many ideas into a confined space, delivering her lines with affectless speed that can require a lyric sheet to decipher the literary, political, and cultural allusions. Depending on your particular disposition, certain phrases might emerge from the racket—“Sure as you’re born, they bought me a short black dress” is a clear nod to Chuck Berry’s “Promised Land,” for instance—but recognizing the titular puns of “Are You Loathsome Tonight” or “I Love the Sound of Structured Class” isn’t required to enjoy The Interrogator; this isn’t a lecture, it’s rock’n’roll.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
