Interpol’s brilliance comes in sparks these days. Every album after 2007’s Our Love to Admire, when they stopped being a fascination of indie culture writ large, does have a couple of straightforward thrillers on them. Even their self-titled record’s “Barricade” might stick if you let it. “The Rover” was fine, too, although the album it was on, last year’s Marauder—a loose concept album about saying goodbye to the band’s heyday in the early aughts—was less so.

You can reason with many of Interpol’s misses; every band loses steam at some point. But in a way, Marauder’s failings were more frustrating because they can’t be compartmentalized as the trio simply tripping over themselves. It sounds like producer Dave Fridmann was working against the band’s interest. Paul Banks’ voice sounded gargled when he opened his throat on the hooks, and sometimes Daniel Kessler’s guitar notes puttered out as if it’s him who doesn’t realize he has to really press those guitar strings against the fretboard. Making an album sound waterlogged is not an aesthetic.

On A Fine Mess, there’s a sense that the production actively tries to disrupt what Interpol does well. The most elegant Kessler/Banks compositions play like they’re sizing each other up until they converse and reckon for the climax. On the EP’s opening title track, however, they clash in ugly drunken fisticuffs, sounding like amateurish punk from dudes who are not amateur punks. There are also some blaring keys in the song’s back half that might’ve been a nice psychedelic touch if there was an effort to give them some color.

The stated intentions behind collaborating with Fridmann for the Marauder sessions was the hope of bringing in an intense energy. Fridmann has the resumé, but some things aren’t a good fit. The EP’s five songs were recorded at the same time as the Marauder sessions and his maximalist production approach continues to clash with Interpol’s sleek, compressed tension in their songwriting. “Real Life” has that signature single note riff that’s a staple in most of Interpol’s bangers, but the mix isn’t even aware of the formula. Instead of making sure that guitar line reverberates, the instruments sloppily smoosh into each other. It feels like a work in progress and sounds like a true demo.

Tradition dictates that there be a few lines working through the take-it-or-leave-it nature of Banks lyrics. They straddle the line between poetic quips on interpersonal relationships or emo mad-libbing—that tightrope broadens depending on who you ask. The opener’s “My life is pro-creation/So I make time to rewind those memories and play” has a nice tragicomic ring to it on paper. Maybe the lines, “Falling ashes at my feet/Wasted up in shadows in between/The faces I know, I would die to keep them from harm” on the closer “Thrones” storm through with too much-unwarranted gravitas. But his voice is too distorted and buried under the sonic detritus to bother to give them too much thought. Interpol might still be an exceptional act, but it’s a chore to have to squint this hard to see it.