Interpol - The Antics Roadshow

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STARSANDHEROES talks to Paul Banks and Carlos D from INTERPOL

In the two years since Matador released Interpol’s rightly acclaimed debut album Turn On The Bright Lights, something slightly surprising has happened. An army of fans has developed, beguiled by the New Yorkers’ grand sonic gestures, floridly evocative lyrics and distinct sartorial sharpness – and displaying a level of devotion that can’t be bought, much less fought by competitors.

Higher concepts of “band as lifestyle choice” aren’t thrown around especially frequently – think Manics, think The Cure – but Interpol have certainly tapped into that coveted sector of the fan’s brain that says, “I will defend them to the death, and no they don’t sound anything like bloody Joy Division”. More by accident than by design, Interpol’s rise to cult hero status has coincided with a general sea-change in music toward the sounds and atmospherics of the early 1980s. As well as the more obvious Televisions/Blondies/Talking Heads, the likes of Echo & The Bunnymen, XTC and Elvis Costello are once again becoming touchstones for a generation of bands on both sides of the Atlantic.

So it’s fitting that we find Interpol in the mid stages of a well-received US and Canadian tour with The aforementioned Cure, whose singer Robert Smith hand-picked the four-piece to join the pop-goth charabanc that is the Curiosa tour, along with The Rapture and Mogwai. For Interpol singer Paul Banks and bassist/keyboard player Carlos D [guitarist Dan Kessler and drummer Sam Fogarino are sadly unavailable], talking to The Fly from their respective hotel rooms in Toronto, wish-fulfilment doesn’t quite cover it.

Paul enthuses about having “played poker with Robert Smith – he’s a really, really good guy. He watches all the bands from backstage every night,” and Carlos agrees that the tour is “going really well. It’s a dream come true for me especially – I’m a huge Cure fan. It was a little frightening at first – the pressure was on, there’s the factor of not playing in front of your own audience – but each show’s better than the last one. We’ve seen The Cure every night – it never gets old!” Is Carlos scared by the Cure-like obsessive streak rapidly becoming evident in Interpol’s hardcore fans? “Yeah – it’s especially scary when you’re doing a record signing and someone writes you a poem with information about your shoe size…”

“We have a certain ethos that derives from being on an indie label, doing things our own way, and that all comes together as a unique entity that appeals,” offers Carlos by way of explanation. Paul concurs: “We pay attention to the details. There are no accidents on the record, it’s all intentional – you feel like it’s worth listening to carefully”. “When I first started listening to music,” Carlos admits, “I was really into heavy metal like Iron Maiden, so I can totally relate to the whole notion of obsessing over a group, and hoisting that group up on some pedestal that defines every single move you make.”

Interpol are talking to STARSANDHEROES on account of the imminent release of second album Antics, a slow-burning, cathartic exercise in love lost and dreams squandered in the chiming, post-gothic, intensely guitar-heavy style already familiar to owners of …Bright Lights. It’s likely to leave the band open to accusations of water-treading, but let’s face it, a stylistic volte-face at this stage was hardly likely. Faced with STARSANDHEROES’ perhaps slightly rash assertion that Interpol are in fact goths, Carlos is admirably unrepentant: “I used to definitely be, like, super-übergoth! I don’t define myself as a goth [anymore], but I have gothic sensibilities in fashion and attitude.”

Interpol fandom is typified as much by matters sartorial as musical, a fact not lost on the band members, who put a lot of effort into their odd mod/futuristic gangster/Kraftwerk rent boy look. “That aspect of our band presentation derives from being considered as individuals in our personal lives,” says Carlos, “It’s just as much a part of the morning ritual as brushing your teeth or eating cereal. But the music part, that’s not part of our personal endeavours – it’s part of the shared experience that we as a group have in our rehearsal space. So for us, the separation’s very, very clear.”

This attention to detail is a very New York thing – see also The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Strokes et al – and a point that hasn’t gone unnoticed in other parts of the world. In fact, The Fly has uncovered a youth subculture called Dek Naew, in Thailand of all places, which takes Interpol’s striking hair, clothes and footwear as the blueprint for their own image. Carlos, while faintly incredulous, takes this news in his stride with a suspiciously knowing laugh, as if he’d planned tonsorial world domination all along.

There’s every chance you’ve already heard “Slow Hands”, the insistent lead single off Antics, on the radio or out and about. The track has had a slightly unorthodox journey from Paul Banks’s head to your radio: it was originally called “Rod Laver”, after the renowned US tennis player, despite the lyrics making no reference to him whatsoever. As it turns out, it seems Interpol’s image as dour, humourless curmudgeons may be slightly unfounded – this is apparently a continuation of the grand jokey tradition practiced by New Order among others, to name songs whatever they damn well like. Sadly the band hadn’t got Laver’s permission to use his name, so the title had to be changed at the last minute – thus depriving the indie world of more Delgados/Bettie Serveert-style music/sport collision amusement value.

As to press interpretations of Interpol thus far (y’know, the “dark clothes + portentous lyrics = miserable bastards” theory), Carlos and Paul have two very different takes on the issue. Carlos insists that, right or wrong, the portrayal “is not the kind of impression that’ll work against us – it’s a misconception, but it’s a perfectly acceptable and understandable one”. Conversely, a somewhat defensive Paul seemingly does everything he can to reinforce the idea: “I do take myself pretty seriously. I don’t really care, I don’t really think anyone’s got us tagged the wrong way”. So much for The Fly’s theory that amid the occasionally grating student poetry peppering much of Antics, there lies an arch, mordantly witty satirist in the Thom Yorke/Andrew Eldritch mould…

If there’s one aspect of Antics which differentiates it from …Bright Lights, it’s Interpol’s more focused grasp of the dynamics of songwriting – principally a result of playing their debut album to death on tour, figuring out which bits work best live, and developing them. When The Fly saw Interpol live in 2003, they seemed detached from the music pouring off the stage, as if they’d started method acting their own songs. But Paul and Carlos insist it’s the live experience that has made Antics what it is, and the snidey negative press from some quarters had no effect whatsoever: “We’re all more sophisticated songwriters now,” explains the singer, “People were wrong the first time, but they’ll say what they’ll say. Because we were on the road for six months, we were prohibited from writing together – which is what we do, after all. The recording was stressful – we wanted to get it right – but the writing was great.”

For a niche band like Interpol, with a coterie of hardcore fans and a growing mass of more casual but no less vital devotees, it would be easy to be cynical and target market the disaffected teens, no? Paul explodes. “No! Well, there are two things. One is that I think our audience is very diverse – we don’t really cater to any one group. And secondly, writing songs is a much more natural process – songs get written relative to themselves and the four of us, nothing outside of ourselves impacts on the composition. This is not a business, it’s much more simple and more pleasurable.”

When Interpol announced a short series of European dates to support the release of the new album, they sold out in a matter of minutes – they play London’s Scala on 14th September, but eBay’s your only hope. Antics is the sound of four men who have quickly worked out what they’re good at, gilding lilies with all their might; the general feeling right now is that Interpol are consolidating their position as dark pop torchbearers, and that the third LP will spin off into space. And just for the record – we asked him – when Paul Banks opened his mouth to sing for the very first time, it just came out like that. Honest.

Interpol’s Antics album is released through Matador Records on 27th September 2004. See www.interpolny.com for details.

Originally published in The Fly magazine, September 2004 issue.