The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

Interpol are up against it, right up against it. Here is a band with their backs firmly up to the wall, carefully and methodically drawing breath as they wipe the sweat from their brows and push their hair back waiting for the inevitable lengthening of the shadows. This is the Big One and Interpol more than know it.

Some context: bands struggle in the daylight hours at the Reading festival - Siouxsie & The Banshees, Fields of the Nephilim and, more recently, My Chemical Romance have all been mercilessly uncovered by an environment that refuses to heighten the sense of drama. No dark, no lights; only music and performance. And, although they’re nowhere near about to crumble to dust, Interpol will today live or die by their musical merits alone. With dusk still over an hour away, the quartet is aware that, while this is no cruel exposure, their picture is about to be brought sharply into focus.

So it is that Paul Banks, Daniel Kessler, Sam Fogarino and Carlos D - tonight seemingly played by Crispin Glover - take their places in a display of sharply observed style and monochrome panache that’s radically at odds with the great unwashed at the front of the stage. The heat still beats relentlessly down from the heavens and it’s impossible to shake the feeling that this is a rare chance for Interpol to actually see an audience - certainly one this large. Vocalist Banks attempts to avert his gaze by hiding behind his floppy fringe for as long as possible. Indeed, beyond the flourishes and lack of embellishments stands a band far removed from its usual theatrical surroundings.

The descending chimes of opener ‘Pioneer To The Falls’ are even more cautious and uncertain than on record as Interpol peer over the parapets with an uncharacteristic diffidence. The nerves remain throughout: where they should be widescreen, Interpol are appearing on a laptop’s media player. Their tentative first steps are palpably furtive. ‘Obstacle 1’ fares better, their confidence rising continually.

Where the first half suffers from a self-conscious hesitancy, the remainder of the set counter-attacks with vigour. As if awakening from an extended slumber, ‘Mammoth’ lives up to its name; ‘Evil’ is positively dripping with it; and ‘The Heinrich Maneuver’ sneers with disdain at the West Coast from the solace of a downtown dive bar.

It’s not an approach that will see Interpol’s name inked indelibly into the annals of Reading greats. But their late surge, while not earning them a platoon of new fans, at least gladdens the hearts of the legions of existing ones. Chalk this one up as a very minor victory, then.

Questions & Answers with Interpol’s Daniel Kessler, by Andrew Fenwick

Do you prefer writing and crafting your music to touring and promoting it?
The two feed off of each other. When we first started touring we realised we couldn’t write on the road - they’re two totally different beasts. I enjoy coming back from tour, waking up in the morning, picking up the guitar and writing for three hours. It’s not something I’m able to do on the road, but performing the songs is equally as fulfilling.

Do you have to psyche yourself up before going on tour?
Not really, it’s more about timing and learning how to pace yourself. We’ve toured a hell of a lot now, and we know our own temperament and what each band member might be more sensitive towards. I guess we’ve still got things to learn, but as four grown men travelling together and doing something so intense we’ve learnt what’s bullshit and what’s not.

How do you deal with the success Interpol have achieved?
We made music for almost five years without anyone paying any mind, so when you think back to that it really helps to ground you. I remember being depressed and really frustrated at the time sending out demos to every single label you could think of. Matador rejected us three times before they said yes, but I was working at a label myself so I knew you couldn’t take it personally - it was just the nature of the beast. At the same time it really solidified my belief in what we were doing because it proved we had the drive to stick it out and weren’t making music for superficial reasons. Every time we practised and a new idea came about my brain would be stimulated in a way unlike anything else, and it put me in an almost Zen-like state where deals and all that shit didn’t matter. I think we were part of the last sedge of bands that had to work hard and pay their dues, and it really helped us because we wouldn’t have been able to handle it if we’d be thrown into the limelight straight away.

That said, it must be difficult writing with so much expectation hanging over your heads?
You know, it really isn’t. I don’t know what it is about us but we kind of have a sixth sense which enables us to be very natural and organic when we’re writing. We’re four strong, stubborn personalities so there’s enough pressure from each other alone without taking notice of anyone else’s viewpoints.

Your new album Our Love To Admire is your most ambitious work yet. How much of a challenge was the creation process?
You can never predict where a song’s going to go - from the minute you start writing them they take their own direction. ‘The Heinrich Maneuver’ might sound like one of the most straightforward tracks on the album but we actually hit a bit of a roadblock when writing the middle section. ‘Wrecking Ball’ almost didn’t make it onto the record for the same reason, but others like ‘Pioneer To The Falls’ and ‘Mammoth’ came together insanely quickly. Interpol at its finest is when we have this great flow of ideas and synergy, and we really tried to build on that with the more ethereal tracks like ‘The Lighthouse’.

Did you worry that this new expansiveness in sound would cause problems when taking the songs to the stage?
Yeah, we knew they’d be a bigger challenge to perform and that’s why we’re not playing all of them live just yet. When most bands expand their sound with orchestration it tends to be based on quite simple samples, but we actually have this crazy, dangerous system where each keyboard part is constructed from scratch, so it’s not simply a case of flicking a switch on the sound desk. I don’t know why but we always seem to make things difficult for ourselves.

Do you have difficulty listening to any of the music you’ve recorded in the past?
No, not really. After recording something I move on and tend not to listen to it, but I’m still immensely proud of the work, and I wouldn’t change anything if given the chance. If I’m in a bar and one of our tunes comes on I don’t sit there cringing, but Paul can be quite a harsh critic sometimes. Occasionally he’ll be like, ‘Why didn’t we do that bit differently?’, but then he’ll hear it again and say, ‘Actually, it’s pretty damn good.’ And the rest of us will be like, ‘Yup, we knew that all along!’

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