Laying Down The Law

Carlos might have left, but Interpol deserve your attention more than ever. The latest album from NYC’s darkest sons is stunning – Niall Doherty finds them comfortably settling into life as a three-piece…

If Interpol are missing Carlos D, they’re certainly not showing it. Standing on a sidewalk in a scuzzy street in the Gowanus neighbourhood of Brooklyn for their Fly photoshoot, it’s remarkable how at ease Interpol’s remaining members look as a three-piece. The worry that without Dengler’s angular sharpness the band’s aesthetic identity might be lost evaporates into the afternoon’s humid air as Paul Banks, Daniel Kessler and Sam Fogarino effortlessly pose for shots. If Michael Stipe said that, in the aftermath of Bill Berry’s departure from R.E.M., that a “three-legged dog is still a dog, it just has to learn to run differently”, then Interpol look like they’ve got a strut on. And rightly so – Dengler’s departure should be a sub-plot to their new album rather than the spotlight-hogging theme – ‘Interpol’ is their best record yet, a dense, intricately crafted album of scope and skyscrapingly epic ambition. “Well, photos are easy with three – there’s less configuration of bodies,” nods frontman Paul Banks when The Fly points out our surprise at how well they’ve taken to adopting the stance of a three-piece – honestly, we were expecting a Dengler-less Interpol to look odd. “The trio,” says Banks, “has a good power.” Indeed, there’s a nonchalant, positive vibe around Banks (black, bicep-hugging t-shirt, black jeans, Interpol sweatband on wrist), guitarist Daniel Kessler (razorsharp Prada suit) and drummer Sam Fogarino (shirt, jacket, pork-pie hat) today that suggests they’ve been liberated by Carlos’ leaving rather than shackled by it. All three are affable and talkative – Kessler is warm and chatty, Fogarino breezy and charismatic, whilst a laid-back Banks utterly fails to live up to his unfair reputation as Interpol’s Grinch; if he’s slightly aloof, it’s not to the point of arrogance and, even if he doesn’t mean it, you get the distinct impression you’re in the presence of a fucking cool rock star. We’re not here today to talk Carlos, though, we’re here to talk about their stunning fourth album, but the two are inseparably linked. Dengler co-wrote and plays on the record, leaving only once his parts were complete, meaning rather than some shall-we-mention-it-shan’t-we elephant in the room, the former bassist crops up at nearly every point. What a way to go, though – ‘Interpol’ truly feels like the culmination of the band’s career so far, taking the spiky urgency of their first two records and matching it to the widening, burgeoning scope of their sometimes brilliant, sometimes excessive third album ‘Our Love To Admire’.

“There were some extra listens required on the third one,” concedes Banks. “In the context of our work so far, this record is somewhat effortless sounding, but by far the most challenging stuff we’ve done to date, so it makes me think that the third record was sort of transitional in a way. It was our first taking steps to a higher plateau of sophistication or whatever it is that we were trying to do in the context of a band – that third record was the first steps towards a new destination and the fourth record is having arrived at the destination and then made a record. So, it doesn’t feel like we’re trying hard, it doesn’t feel like we’re striving, but we’ve evolved, substantially.” “I think we wanted to do something quite different, have a different approach – instrumentations, orchestrations, keyboard sounds and so forth played a prominent role in the writing of this record,” adds Kessler, who, at odds with Banks’ laconic drawl, sounds like he’s struggling to keep up with his own thoughts when talking about Interpol’s music. And, yep, he did just use the phrase ‘so forth’. He’ll use it again in a bit. Kessler, in essence, is the start and the end point for Interpol albums. Whilst Banks, under his Julian Plenti guise, and Fogarino, with Magnetic Morning, were indulging in inter-album side-projects, Kessler was busy piecing together the blueprint for what would become album#4. Then, following a dense period of writing and recording, he was the last one in the studio, restless and tinkering until the last. “When I’m still not at peace with things, still in the record-making process, like mixing or mastering, I have to keep going back to it and thinking ‘is there time to do something to it?’ and act like a maniac,” he says. “I drive everyone around me a little bit crazy. Once I put it away, it means I’m happy with it – I’m into it. But, until that time, until it’s really gone, I’ll probably keep trying to work on it.” “As far as an overarching musical idea, I think Daniel generally moved his songwriting forward and tried to do new things,” offers Paul, “and Carlos was trying to challenge and turn on its head whatever Daniel brought forward. This time around I think Daniel brought forward more strange stuff than in the past and then Carlos was trying to take it even further. So, it’s quite out there musically and then when I got to it, I decided I wanted to make the vocals more immediate, almost as counter balance to the fact the music is quite challenging.” If that makes it sound laboured, then the opposite is true of the resultant record; ‘Interpol’ is their most effortlessly cohesive album yet, possessing a flow that marks a true evolution in their sound. If before, Interpol’s instrumentation sounded like it was sparring with each other – Kessler’s thorny, linear guitar riffs shadow-boxing around Dengler and Fogarino’s jittery, staccato rhythm section, all underpinned by Banks’ barbed vocals – then here the music moves en masse, marching forward as an organic, but never overblown, whole. “Yeah, I think, early on, y’know, you’re a rock band on your first and second record and there’s only so much room to take up – guitars, bass, drums, so forth, and we’ll always be a rock band,” says Kessler, “but now no-one feels like ‘where’s my part, I need to be doing stuff here.’ I don’t think people feel this way in this band. Certainly with this batch of songs, people didn’t need to feel like they were doing stuff.”

“It’s kind of one breathing beast,” states Fogarino. “I think we were all in agreement on that. I really laid hard on doing it in the A Room at Electric Lady because it’s really big, so we could give it a nice bombastic sound, accentuate the bombasity of it all. That kind of led to that kind of bigger sound which, not big in a throwaway, but big in a natural way. That’s the way it was written, too. Working with four alpha males is kind of hard. Everybody has really strong opinions and everybody is very capable in the songwriting process not only with their given instruments but in terms of what the song should sound like and not just from the perspective of a guitar player or a drummer. But once you get past that, you get to a point where a song becomes a song, it was very easy and we were all very happy along the way.”

For Banks, the record marked a departure in that it didn’t involve dragging himself through a mental assault course to get his vocals done. “It was really a smoother process for me than ever before – the vocals were much easier on this record,” he explains. “I’ve been quoted saying around ‘Antics’ that it was a bitch of a record to make and that pales in comparison to how hard ‘Our Love To Admire’ was for me. I was very disenchanted in a way with the third album cos I said, ‘why the fuck isn’t it getting easier’. But for this record it was easier, I did manage to find some adjustments to my inner creativity – between thought and expression lies a lifetime, as Lou Reed says. [Doing the Julian Plenti record] could have been a factor for things being easier for me vocally – it’s one extra walk down that road, y’know? Cos music comes very easily to me, melodies come to me very easily to me but, you know, but finalising what my vocals is what becomes difficult and where I take my time, so I think just one more walk down that road, I’m sure contributed to me feeling a little bit more at ease.”

‘Interpol’ sees Banks, like the rest of his bandmates, on top of their game; from the opening, seething surge of ‘Success’ to the percussive, jilted groove that drives the piano-led ‘Summer Well’ to the unsettling melancholic minor chords of ‘Always Malaise (The Man I Am)’, it’s a record of exploration and expanse; on one hand, the likes of ‘Barricade’ underlines their masterful way at art-rock rampages, but it’s in the likes of ‘Lights’, ‘Always Malaise’ and ‘The Undoing’ that they truly raise the stakes. The achingly crumpled glide of ‘The Undoing’, especially, is astounding – the best thing they’ve ever done. “Carlos and I had a lot of back and forth on ‘The Undoing’,” smiles Paul. “There was a lot of orchestration I was fighting him on an aesthetic level and then I’d go to the microphone and have a million ideas to sing on it, so it was sort of like ‘well fuck it, I can sing to this, so, y’know, whatever.’” “[This record] is kind of going against the tide of this age, the digital age,” affirms Daniel. “It’s a voyage – you have to spend some time with it. It’s a funny thing to do in an age where people are living and dying by the song, they don’t think about the record, but I care about albums, I don’t really care about individual songs. We’ve never had any success, in my opinion, because of one song. I do think it’s our most complete record, our most cohesive record. Not taking anything away from any of the other records, but right now I really feel like we’ve evolved and taken a step forward.”

It makes sense, then, that their definitive record should be self-titled… “It was Paul’s idea,” states Sam. “I remember him bringing it up in the middle of a rehearsal or a writing session. He felt like it was just an Interpol record and we don’t need to convolute that feel with yet another group of words, to name this body of recording. He thought at an early stage of the game that it should be called ‘Interpol’.” There’s also a line of thought that, in the wake of Carlos leaving, it’s an opportunity to reassert the band’s identity. “It’s true,” nods Sam, “but what’s funny is that he was a part of that too. Maybe he knew something we didn’t.” Was it a shock when he did leave? “It wasn’t something we all knew, but it wasn’t a shock,”  says Paul. “Carlos was very committed to the record,” adds Sam. “He wanted to finish the record, but he was uncertain as to whether he wanted to promote the record. He wasn’t into doing this, or playing live for a few nights a week for a year and a half. He had other avenues in life he wanted to explore. It’ll be a different question when we do record number five, but right now I’m happy that we don’t have an unhappy member and I’m happy knowing that he’s in pursuit of his own life and is content to do so.” “We knew he was conflicted during the writing process,” concludes Daniel. “He loved the songs we were writing and he loved our music and he loved the band, but he’s always had other ideas and thought about things outside of being in a rock band.” They march on, their new record destined to establish them as one of the planet’s most intelligent, important rock bands. They might be a man down, but Interpol are stronger, and better, than ever.

‘Interpol’ is released on Co-Op on September 13th.