‘WE'VE NEVER REALLY TRIED TO no ANYTHING EXCEPT WRITE soNos'
most beautiful moments in rock music you‘ll hear all year. It encapsulates not only what is great about Interpol (they make grand. dynamic musical gestures and sway on a lyrical tightrope between being wilfully oblique and starkly confessional). it also shows they are the kings of the bittersweet.
The New York quartet have been branded many things in their lifetime: dour. pretentious. arch. miserable. Joy Division-obsessed. but to
be honest they‘re not. and never were. any of
these things. Spending time talking with both Banks and guitarist Daniel Kessler about the band. their motivations. their dynamic. even their unusual formation — they formed the hand first and became close friends later — they resist battling other people‘s preconceptions. In fact they seem almost content to let haters come to the wrong conclusions. assuming. perhaps. if you don‘t get it on first impressions. you never will.
While they continue to give upstarts like liditors lessons in all things epic and glacial. they haye allowed their songs to grow more complex. The great thing is. they haven‘t suffocated under the weight of their own ambitions. Something that is a frequent
problem when a band with ideas as distinct as Interpol tries to evolve. Paul Banks understands the dangers of forcing your music to ‘develop‘. “This album was a natural progression. It‘s maybe just a bit more sophisticated and honed in style. We didn‘t try to reinvent the wheel: it‘s sort of foreign to us to have any concept before going into writing songs anyway. I mean. I could see us approaching an album conceptually in the future but we haven‘t tried that yet. That‘s why I think you might detect that kind of thread of consistency to our music because we‘ve never really tried to do anything except write songs.‘ This album was the first the band recorded in New York. its predecessors having been created in a house in upstate Connecticut. miles away
from pretty much everything. The benefits of
being able to go home every night this time round were tangible.
‘There were times during the making of/lnn‘r's when I wouldn‘t leave the house f‘or like ten days.‘ says Kessler. ‘Have you ever seen that .S‘I‘mpsrms episode when Homer plays Howard Hughes and he gets crazy? Like you haven‘t seen the outside world in a long time. That was us. Making a record in New York is an intense and anxious experience and things fall behind schedule. but then you can walk out into the street and you get distracted right away. You can leave the record behind f‘or the night when you
can‘t really control anything. I get kind of
obsessed about these things. It was a healthy thing to let it go. and go back into it the next day.‘
The band are inextricably linked with their city but both Kessler and Banks struggle to quantify its influence: ‘Come back to us once we‘ve made a record somewhere else.‘ laughs Banks. Their music evokes the grime and passion of the city. It can also personify the unflinching. often blunt attitude adopted by New Yorkers as regards the rest of the world. Somehow. though. they still manage to evoke a degree of romance. Interpol‘s New York is a flawed. contradictory dame and here. akin to Woody Allen‘s Manhattan. it is captured in crisp monochrome.
()ne element that goes hitherto unrecognised in the Interpol arsenal is humour. Okay. so not hysterical belly laughs. but a dark. dry wit. This is something that is often overlooked. Banks might not be Richard Pryor but he has a fondness for a cryptic gag. whether it‘s new songs about sexual experimentation or perhaps a line about those shoes fitting like a dove.
‘Yeah. the whole ‘No l in Threesome‘ [the title of one of their tracks] thing is pretty cheeky: I guess it made us smirk.‘ Banks giggles. ‘But as far as wearing shoes that fit like a dove you have to go to LA and watch people. You‘ll see what I mean.‘
The humour. like the song lyrics. the image and the titles are all open to interpretation. Which is kind of how Interpol like it.
‘You don‘t want to guide people. Their own impressions are their own impressions. We‘ve made something that might inspire some but we don‘t want to give them our exact points of reference. I think it‘s that simple. That‘s why we don‘t always reveal everything. It‘s so much harder in this day and age when the internet reveals everything for you. ’e‘re just doing our
bit.
Interpol play Radio 1/NME Stage Sun 8 Jul. Our Love to Admire is out Mon 9 Jul on Parlophone
Expand your musical horizons instantly with some online nuggets from the young bucks of T in the Park As enjoyable as it seems, a full festival experience cannot be gained from standing rooted to the spot near the main stage or spending three days and nights off your nut in the dance tent. No, if you want to make the most of your TITP time set yourself a challenge to do something different this year; take a chance on a band you've never heard. perhaps. or set your sights on a singer with a really strange name . . . and to start you off we've compiled this list of un-missable lesser known acts complete with web-based evidence of their brilliance. First up try some 1 Remi Nicole. a hotly-tipped London-based lass boasting sassy bittersweet pop songs. Catch a short clip of her first tour diary here: http://tinyurl.com/2dn8me and prepare to fall head over heels. 2 Malcolm Middleton and New York bar rock loons 3 The Hold Steady are also pretty swoonsome. if you like your guitar music gruff and gritty around the edges. For further proof and a bit of downright peculiar balloon love, Middleton's video for “A Brighter Beat'. can be found at http://tinyurl.com/29nvnq and for some hilarious news anchors in the bath/bed/swimming pool japery see the video for ‘Chips Ahoy!‘ at ttp://tinyurl.com/2q87hm.
Now, if you 5/.“ a haven‘t yet fully i ~l appreciated the 5 genius of Blood 1 Red Shoes on record then you’re a damn fool. but yourchanceto play catch-up comes from their wonderfully frantic live performances captured by a fan also on Youtube. Go to http://tinyurl.com/2pcyll and prepare to have your head fried. Talking of amazing gigs. take the most demented show you’ve ever seen, multiply it by about a million and you’ll get close to what it's like to witness 4 Gogol Bordello play. Even on the sedate Jools Holland show here at http://tinyurl.com/2sf508 the eccentric gypsy Dunks manage to send shivers down your spine.
Finally. if anyone needs convincing about the merits of The Gossip then point them towards the Arkansas trio's take on “Careless Whisper' at http://tinyurl.com/2rtuus. George Michael's big guilty feet never sounded so good. or so funky . . . (Camilla Pia)
I". SKI". :3 .J... k‘l‘lh' THE LIST 15