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I assume there were tons of reasons to hate Interpol’s Our Love To Admire. Generally panned by critics Our Love to Admire seemed to mark a once promising band’s decent into mediocrity. I agreed for entirely different reasons. From the track listing I knew I would hate this album. “No I in Threesome” doesn’t sound like the band I fell in love with my freshman year of college. Well maybe it does. But it doesn’t sound like it should be from the same suited quartet that wrote “NYC.”

In the summer of 2004, I couldn’t wait to leave Zephyrhills. I applied to colleges with the specific intent of leaving the Tampa Bay Area and never returning. I wanted a fresh start. I wanted to recreate myself in a new found image. I wanted to be completely different. In high school I was generally whiny and pretty weird. I don’t think these things lend themselves well to being well liked or even getting a girl to find me mildly attractive. As a result I knew moving to Gainesville, where I knew no one, would mean I could start over.

But I forgot. I knew no one.

Ostensibly the purpose of the dorms is that you shouldn’t feel lonely in a new city. I inhabited the same 192 square feet with two other people. Sort of. One of my roommates had a girlfriend at the time. Not surprisingly he spent most of his time with her, probably having sex considering the first time I met her she wore a shirt that advocated supporting local music by having intercourse with local artists. The other roommate ostensibly was also having sex. Although one can never be sure, but he slept in the bunk above me and I would awake to skinny girl pleas “I’ve got to go to class, sorry” or “Do you want to watch Win a Date With Tad Hamilton again?” The tiny, most likely blond, body would spill onto the floor and disappear. Needless to say, I couldn’t really connect with the guy who slept in the bed 20 inches above me.

But I wasn’t without social interaction. On my first day in the dorms I met the people who would become my friends for most of my college career. They were warm and welcoming, but somehow I still did not feel warmly welcomed. Shyness overtook me and I couldn’t bring myself to actually ask these people to hang out even though we were literally hanging out (on the third floor ledge). In my growing depression over my lack of social interaction I found solace in the final verse of NYC “It’s up to me now, turn on the bright lights.”

Despite my high school convictions, I was tired of all these lonely nights and I was tired of training myself not to care. It did bother me that I didn’t feel like I had immediate friends. It did bother me that I ate most lunches alone. So when my family came to see me in Gainesville I started crying uncontrollably. It was too much, in that one moment when I saw my sister and father’s face smile at me I lost it. It all flooded into my brain: I was lonely and it did effect me.

And that was the problem with a song like “No I in Threesome.” It felt as though Interpol was no longer writing anthems for me, but for the guy in the top bunk. But maybe it isn’t that Paul Banks in his baritone, abandoned me. Maybe he just changed more than I could.