Pick four songs from any band and you can tell a lot about their sound. This summer, I’m featuring #RockBlocks, four picks from bands across various genres. They might be wildly different from each other, but what binds them together is the fact that they’re all a part of my life soundtrack.

By the time Interpol’s fourth album came out, I had begun to lose hope that they could recover to the stature of the first two albums. I don’t think they’ve been back at that level since. But “Lights” was an anomaly. It was epic. While Turn on the Bright Lights and Antics had the full body of work from top to bottom, “Lights” shined on a self-titled LP that lacked depth.

Like a good story, a good song has an arc. A good song doesn’t stay up at one level for 3 or 4 minutes and then call it quits. It goes somewhere. It takes you on a journey. This is the strength of “Lights”. Like so many Cure anthems before it, it builds with multiple layers, each coming in at their appointed time. It’s not a cheap pop thrill like “Barricade”, it instead envelopes you slowly and decisively.

“All that I see is peaceful eyes drawn away from me.”