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Interpol.
 Interpol's
Paul Banks takes my call backstage at the first night of the
Curiosa tour in the US, at which Interpol are just below the
headliners. "You're not robbing me of the experience of seeing
The Cure," he laughs, "but we are talking while they are playing,
yes. They're playing... [sings] doo doo doo, you know, the new
single [The End Of The World]. Their new record's amazing. And
with this tour - I mean, Mogwai are probably my favourite live
band in the world so I agree, it's a nice bill. Nice for me!"
The reason I'm preventing him from watching The Cure is Interpol's brand new album 'Antics.' It's a rock solid release and in some ways eclipses their excellent - and much-acclaimed - 2002 debut 'Turn On the Bright Lights.' However, Banks swiftly dismisses any suggestion that the band must have felt pressure in making the follow-up. "No - I mean, only if someone had written the first record for us and we had to fake it a second time or something like that. We just love writing music together and I think we've all kinda evolved as musicians, so it wasn't daunting. And because of the touring the first time around kept us from being able to write together for 16 months, so when we got back to the opportunity the songs just jumped out very easily."
He pauses when I suggest that some of the songs seem to have been written to play live, compared with the bedroom soundscapes of the first album. "Hmmm. Well, if anything's going to inform your songs after touring for 16 months on your first record, it's gonna be what you are from playing live. In the backs of our minds we individually probably did write parts that we knew we'd enjoy playing. There was no discussion on that topic, but you learn little things about what it is that you love about playing live, so I think that was there in the back of our minds, that knowledge."
Similarly, he dismisses the claim that the touring made writing the new album a more difficult task. "No. If you think of art as a function of your life, an experience as intense and stimulating as touring around the world playing music just feeds into whatever pool from which your creativity springs, and when you have a chance to tap back into it, it just comes out the way it always has done, but with a lot of artillery, you know?"
As to the actual recording itself, "It was a very similar process to the last one. Peter [Katis, engineer] has an incredible studio and he's got really exquisite taste in vintage equipment, really fine microphones, he invests everything into vintage gear. He's a little obsessive, so it's an exceptionally well-equipped studio."
Katis might have pulled the sounds, but Banks insists that Interpol have no desire to work with an outside producer, per se. "We don't have a use for a producer, in the sense of someone who helps inhabit the composition of the songs, since that's all set before we walk into the studio. But Peter's got a great sense of how to get those sounds onto tape, so he's an invaluable engineer for us."
It's also given the band a recognisable sonic template that's been followed by a number of bands around the world in the last couple of years - for example, the words "Franz" and "Ferdinand" spring immediately to mind. "But they're a great band, they've got their own thing, I think," Banks counters. "I know what you mean, in a way, but the first time I heard them I thought 'The Scottish Strokes.' That was when they had that first EP, though. We took them out on tour briefly with us once, when we were in Europe, long before they were signed, because everyone in the band just thought 'wow! What a great band!' And then when I saw them play live - and they were nothing at that point - I just thought "fucking shit, they've got a lot of soul.' For me it's no surprise that they've done as well as they did."
That said, Banks seems nonplussed about the idea of a band resembling its influences. "Whenever people talk about people sounding like other bands, I always think it's hard enough just to be a band and not completely suck," he laughs, "and I don't think that anyone who was consciously trying to emulate someone else would actually be in a band that gets noticed - there has to be an individual spark in any band for anyone to ever talk about them in the first place."
Andrew P Street
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'Antics' is out now through Remote Control/Inertia.
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