Whether or not we actually pursued higher education, most of us music junkies have a “college record.” That is, a first album that wasn’t simply a favorite, but grabbed and pulverized our consciousness, shaking away the scales of the present and connecting us to history in a way we weren’t aware was possible. Such records are hardly required to be actually earth-shaking—merely the impression of earth-shaking will usually suffice. Perhaps a little allusion to some real earth-shaking that took place in musical generations past, and we’re convinced that we’ve found the album of a generation.

The Bell
Make Some Quiet
Rating: 7.7/10
Badman Recording Co.

I could pretend that I was a music consumer in the late 1970s, when The Bell’s obvious influences were first making their waves (the ones turning up in all those thirty-and-forty-somethings’ reviews—The Cure, Joy Division, Echo & the Bunnymen, etc). I appreciate those bands for what they were and are, but can hardly hail a throwback to the glory days with any sort of respectable authenticity. So I’ll stop at merely noting the intermittent channeling of those repertoires that occurs throughout Make Some Quiet (yes, they’re fair comparisons), and turn to an even better comparison, one with which my generation can certainly connect: Interpol.

A more cliché observation could hardly be made, but everything they always say about Swedish music is true: it invariably reflects the environment in which it first saw the light (or didn’t), and is unable to shake its genetic evocation of its homeland’s icy darkness. This does not quite describe Interpol, but The Bell and that alley-cat New Yorker band share a shadowy atmosphere—a hovering, weighty darkness with an undercurrent of misdeed concocted by baritone vocals/dominant bass line marriage. Meaty, manly, and at moments rather frightening. Make Some Quiet benefits from the Swedish talent for hiding seductive melody in even the most repulsive of rackets, and subsequently sounds like the bored, restless lion that was Our Love to Admire might have had it been administered a Jagerbomb and a sense of adventure. The riffs, the strings, the cold vocals—it’s all there, but with liberated rhythms and without the segments of mountain-eating plodding.

The biggest Interpol imagery happens on the first single of sorts, “On and On,” where singer Mathias Stromberg sounds uncannily like Paul Banks, and the drum-driven backing resembles the rhythm-show spectaculars of Antics. (Oh, good place to note: The Bell cheats a bit in this department, having a drum machine play all of its beats). “Target Group” plays another of Interpol’s cards, having its vocals paradoxically express passion while remaining essentially monochrome. The biting lyrics (“You’re a man and you’re white and you’re young/And you’re better left alone”) and the slicing riff are spiffy, but the drum machine can’t pull off the percussive nuance of a live-drummed song like “Slow Hands.” (In this respect, the song feels more like “Mammoth,” where the pounding beat remains unvaried from start to finish).

But it would be doing The Bell a mischaracterizing disservice to suggest it can be roundly described as an Interpol clone. This band is a bit more flighty, a bit more interested in ethereality and delicacy. That is to say it occasionally zooms in to study the shape of the snowflake, as opposed to simply pondering the glacier. “Never Had to Pay Before” twinkles with here-no-there-no-over-there guitar and piano notes that are really the point of the track—the structure is so unobtrusive and repeated so insistently that we clearly understand to focus on the competing sources of detail in the surrounding system. “Celebrate the Good Times” does its damnedest to navel-gaze through its lyric, and but for its pretty chiming and haunting melody, would be a dud. Instead, it’s charming, wistful, and irresistible. In a breathy 80s daydream, “I Feel Nothing” piles loops of its one-line chorus (“I need nothing/I need no one/I need a little love”) on top of swirling guitar loops for a wispy three minutes of melodic hypnotism.

I could go on describing, but to do so would be to deny you the page-turning exercise that Make Some Quiet succeeds in being—wearing its influences just explicitly enough to keep each track a new guessing game. With plenty of intriguing but unthreatening layers to excavate, it is the perfect introductory academic exercise. And to the grander scheme in which this band is so literate, The Bell has contributed music that comes closer to transcendence than many bands that try much, much harder.