Bright Lights, Big City

12/21/2003 6:00 AM, LAUNCH
Neal Weiss

A lot of New York garage bands have been getting attention as of late: the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, French Kicks, the Walkmen, the Realistics, the Mooney Suzuki, Longwave, the Liars, and of course, the Strokes. They're all fantastic bands from a fantastic scene, but one NYC band that made a big splash in 2003 was Interpol, who eschewed those groups' raw, punky sound for a certain icy, '80s-esque gloom reminiscent of the Chameleons, Bauhaus, and the band to which they've been most often compared, Joy Division. With their slick black-and-white suits and darkly sophisticated sound, Interpol were one of the standout new bands of the year, from New York or elsewhere, and their full-length debut, Turn On The Bright Lights (which was actually released in late 2002), garnered acclaim throughout '03, culminating in their nomination for the prestigious Shortlist Award.

Interpol recently dropped by LAUNCH's Santa Monica studios to perform their ode to their fair city, "NYC," for our cameras; then bandmates Daniel Kessler (guitar) and Carlos Dengler (bass), who first met while attending NYU in the late '90s, chatted with LAUNCH's own Neal Weiss. Here's how that conversation went:

LAUNCH: Tell me the story behind the song "NYC," which is where you're from and of course takes on a lot of additional meaning in these post-9/11 times.

DANIEL: I think "NYC" was a turning point in our songwriting. It was a song that came in with very little chord progression and there was very little communication verbally--we just started playing it and we knew that we didn't want to have a standard arrangement of verse/chorus/verse/chorus. We wanted to have something very linear where you could here the basic core progression throughout the song--which is a great task to take on--and make it very meaningful. It was a lot of hard work.

CARLOS: After a certain point in compositional process of the song it became clear to us that it was going to be epic.

DANIEL: There are two types of songs that I think we have: There's songs where there's clearly a verse and a chorus and a change and it's very traditional and you know where you're going to go, and then with a song like "NYC," when we were writing it, it was very unclear where we were going to go with it. So it was frustrating, but then all of a sudden, one day you have one of those days when you're clicking and you know where it's going to go.

LAUNCH: The song was written before September 11, 2001, so does the song feel any different to you since then?

DANIEL: The song was written in January 2000, and we first played it live in January 2000. We recorded it for the John Peel show in the U.K. in April, so it sort of had...not an ironic meaning at the time, but it was unique to have something about New York City at the time. But since then, 9/11 happened and a lot of New York bands have emerged, and in a way it's kind of got lumped into these other tangibles. But to us, it means the same thing as the day that we wrote it.

LAUNCH: Let's talk about your single, "PDA," a little bit.

DANIEL: "PDA" is one of the first songs that we wrote.

CARLOS: In fact, it's the oldest song in our repertoire.

DANIEL: And in fact I think before [lead vocalist] Paul [Banks] joined the band the song was pretty much arranged. It's one of the first songs we played when we wanted to see if he wanted to join the band, and he liked what he heard and he definitely thought he could work with it. So it's a song we get great joy out of playing and it's a song that we originally wrote with our first drummer--and Sam [Fogarino], who's our drummer now, joined the band two years ago and has taken it to a new level...not a new level, but he gave it a new definition. So it's sort of been reborn.

LAUNCH: Is being "epic" part of the process when it comes to writing music or thinking about your songs?

CARLOS: We're always layering our songs in a way...that's not to say that it's "the Interpol approach" like from here on out, but I guess up until the first album, this album represents the early phase of this band, which is to say that we were really concerned with textures, tones, modes, and atmospheres, and I guess there are different ways to doing that. And I guess I look at "PDA" as really an aggressive, danceable, punky kind of song.

DANIEL: It's an aggressive/epic kind of approach--that's the common point.

CARLOS: But what I said about "NYC" being epic before, I was talking before that it has a universality, maybe.

DANIEL: "PDA" is about raw aggression--it has an epic scale in the sense that there are big sounds, a lot of melodic possibilities happening, but overall, when the breakdown happens, it's aggression. It's kind of letting go within the song itself.

LAUNCH: When you guys came up with the band, was there any kind of mission statement of what you guys wanted to do?

DANIEL: No, there was never a time, and even on the common points we were just talking about within "PDA" and "NYC," they are more just common subconscious agreements. People can listen to our music and link it together, but it's something that we don't even think about. It's just something that happens in the studio. We really communicate without words, through music. and when we're in the studio on a practice basis it's just a raw approach: We just start playing, we just start feeling it out. We're all really different individuals. We all have different tastes in music. I mean, there's overlaps, but we come from different backgrounds, and in the studio and in the space is when we--through music, through our instruments, kind of through just playing--find our similarities or common points. So we've never had a mission statement. It's good this way if we decide to change our sound or go in a different direction--it's not a contradiction against what we set out to do. We just set up a band to make it very democratic and also really have no boundaries, and that's what we are doing. But at the same time, we wanted to make a record that had a very conceptual feeling to it, and I think this album does do that. From the beginning, Interpol didn't start off one way and then say, "Oh man, we should try this tactic or this and that." It's much more than that, and "PDA" is a testament to that.

CARLOS: I think that is proof of how incorrect people are to attempt to pigeonhole us by stating our influences, or some sort of prefabrication about our style, or some over-hyped sense of identity of what this band might have. And when we hear that kind of stuff, we get sort of confused.

DANIEL: At the same time we're very confident. People's perceptions of us are different than we are as individuals, but at the same time when you know how you are as a band and you're very confident in what you do and where you're coming from, you realize that people are going to have their thoughts from the outside. So you have to be very confident at what you do and just leave it at that.

LAUNCH: Comparisons are made about you all the time, most notably Joy Division. Does that band mean anything to you?

CARLOS: I think that the only Joy Division fan in this band is myself. I'm probably the only person who owns a Joy Division album. I dance to Joy Division when I got to a club, but that's really just me in all honesty. And that's what makes us sort of funny. Also, ironically, I think it has to do with the way Paul is singing. Generally the Joy Division comparison is unwarranted because the music isn't anything like it, but Paul's vocals are reminiscent of Ian Curtis's. At the same time, I always thought Ian Curtis was reminiscent of Jim Morrison in a way. And I always dug the way Jim Morrison, in a monotone sort of way, always sung. And if people went around saying, "Yeah, Interpol, their vocalist sounds like Jim Morrison," it would probably be the same sort of dynamic but then again, the same sort of confusion. I mean, Paul never even heard of Ian Curtis before he even began singing. Of course, no one is ever going to believe that, but whatever, that is the fact of the matter.

DANIEL: That is a great point. I equate Paul's voice with Jim Morrison's, but with all three of those singers, it's their timbre of their voices. Paul sings different than Ian Curtis or Jim Morrison, but they're all in the same vocal range, the similarity. And we also realize when people listen to music--and we do it ourselves--"Oh. this band sounds like this," and you kind of sum up a band's existence in two words, and it's kind of bad and unfortunate thing that people do today. So you kind of have to go, "That's what people think," and not make a fuss. We're doing our own thing and we're not thinking too much about those comparisons.

CARLOS: Some people take it even a step further and criticize us for not sounding enough like Joy Division! So for instance, sometimes I've heard, "They're doing the whole retro, post-punk, Joy Division thing, but they're really not doing it right 'cause their album was too well-produced." In my mind I say to myself, "We were never trying to do that, so why would you criticize us for trying to do a very well-produced album?" Like with Dan's point, there's too much talk--that's the unfortunate part of journalism and hype.

LAUNCH: I guess it's a good sign, because people are caring enough to have the conversation in the first place, right?

DANIEL: It's never a bad thing and they usually mean it in a complimentary way, but it's just when you're not coming from somewhere and someone is assuming you are, just like any instance where, well like oh that's not where I'm coming from so I can't say that I am coming from there...like I said, we're pretty confident in what we are doing, so we don't let outside forces penetrate us too much.

LAUNCH: Do you sort of step back and listen to your own music and come up with your own impression of your music?

DANIEL: I don't. When we write music, we put blinders on. Our biggest influence is each other. It's in that moment, when we talk to each other about what's going to happen next and we're just playing, really--it's pretty exciting. It's something that we've been able to salvage and keep the same. The way we write music has gotten better and better, and our communication skills have gotten better as well, but ultimately we never analyze our music too much. When we're writing a song, we're concentrating on what's coming next. Which is the most important aspect of Interpol.

LAUNCH: Is there a chance that there is someone you wish people would say you do sound like?

CARLOS: It's always nice when we hear something a little more penetrating; it's always refreshing when we hear some random, left-of-center comment. Someone might say, "Oh, Paul sounds a little bit like Neil Young," and we'll be like, "Wow, great, thank you!" Or "You guys have a Television thing going on," although that gets mentioned a little bit more often, but we're like, "Oh, great!" Dan and I are both Television fans. In fact the other day someone said that there's a slight dub influence, and that made Dan feel really good, because Daniel's really into dub too. So if people can realize that this is an amalgam of very wide influences, it's very becoming to the person who's giving the compliment because it shows that they're being intelligent, 'cause they're looking a little bit deeper into the music. I really don't have patience for anyone who would come up to me and go, "You're totally doing the post-punk, Joy Division/Echo & the Bunnymen thing."

DANIEL: And everyone seems to not mention the Iron Maiden thing to our band!

LAUNCH: Talk to me a little about how this band works as a democracy, and is it an easy thing to do?

DANIEL: It's not an easy thing. But you have to trust and know that the final product of all four unanimous votes is greater than one person's vision. And the band was formed with that thought in mind. When I formed the band, I wanted to collaborate. I wanted to play one piece of music, my guitar part, and then hear Paul do a vocal line over it and go, "That's great." You know, I can sing a little big and I can write melodies and this and that, but he just would take it somewhere I couldn't take it. And have Carlos do something with the bass, that's like, "Wow, I would have never thought about that!" It makes it hard to repeat oneself in every aspect. But it is very, very difficult. It is hard to communicate that way, but you hope through all the back and forth that you'll come up with something greater. We're all very different. We all come from very different backgrounds. So it makes it even more difficult. But you know, there's something about bands that have one person who does it all: Their records have too much of a consistent feeling throughout. The songs don't have enough diversity and enough change-ups. So to us, everyone in the band could write songs and do everything, basically put the whole song together in the room, but we put faith in each other, and this way we're doing something different and we'll keep doing something different. We'll keep progressing. Normally when we write songs, it's a direct reaction to the last song that we wrote, and then you put that through the mind of three other people and it makes it even more the case. It's a hard thing to have democracy, but it was an important thing, and it wasn't something that we grew into: It was part of package when we started the band. That was the main influence on the band, more than the music--the idea of forming a real band, a democratic one. It is hard, but it's great.

CARLOS: We're without any preconceptions of how it's supposed to sound. You can't have them if you're going to have a democratic process. Otherwise you're going to have preconceived ideas of how the band is going to sound like, and that would never, ever get resolved. So those kinds of intentions sort of have to go to the wayside and just focus on each moment out and see what comes out of it. It's gotten to the point for me where I can't even imagine myself in a band where one person or two other people are running the show, or even I can't even consider them "bands," in a way. I can't believe that there would be a band that would call themselves a "band" and have a name and everything--not a solo artist, but a name--where just one person runs the show. It just seems to me that's not really a band. The definition of a band in a way is that it is a democracy.

LAUNCH: I get that there's a different impression of you guys over in Europe and the U.K. Is that true?

DANIEL: Our first release was on Chemikal Underground, which is a Scottish label, and it came back over here as an import but it's mostly over there, so that's one reason. Also, I think the U.S. and Europe just operate differently. Europe is always looking for new bands and they get excited about new bands and they have ways of getting new bands heard. They have shows like the John Peel's show, which is all about exposing new music. America tends to, I feel, wait for a band to be signed to a label that people care about and already have an interest in, and then they start developing from there. But the don't always look out for new bands. I mean, obviously a band like the Strokes kind of like broke that open a little more, but then again, the Strokes broke over in Europe first and then came back over to America. So I just think it's a different way that they operate.

LAUNCH: So what's up with your suits? Why do you wear them?

DANIEL: Really, honestly, it's not like an image--well, obviously when you're in a band you have an image, and if you're going to be onstage it is an image of what you're wearing, whether you're wearing a T-shirt or a suit. With us, again, it's one of our common points. We're very, very different as individuals, but this is something that we do have in common, wearing suits and ties and dressing up for a certain setting. Ultimately it's just something that we do on an individual basis that connects us as a band, but it's not preconceived as a band image. We never had a band meeting; we don't talk about that stuff. It's not something that we're trying to champion out there.