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Interpol maintain their cool with their intense new album Marauder – Metro US

Interpol maintain their cool with their intense new album Marauder

Interpol maintain their cool with their intense new album ‘Marauder’

Interpol have always maintained the right kind of cool. As one of the original bands included in New york City’s return to rock in the early 2000s, they helped to usher in a new golden age of guitar-centric rock bands that inspired a generation of kids to wear skinny jeans, lace up converse low-tops, and pay for a blocks of Joy Division songs on their local jukeboxes.

But unlike some of their fellow alumni of that era — The Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, particularly — Interpol never saw the same intense feeding frenzy of press coverage and were allowed to create records and evolve in their own universe while maintaining a devout following of diehard fans. On Friday, Aug. 24, the band will release their sixth record, Marauder, on Matador records with a full-fledged world tour to follow.

Interpol sound like a new band on their new album Maruader 

Interpol

Recorded by producer Dave Fridmann directly to analog tape, the new record finds the band playing with the intensity of a group cutting their first album. Songs like the first two singles The Rover and Number 10 showcase the same angular post punk guitar work that made the band so captivating while creating an urgent sense of drive to the record.

Singer Paul Banks’ stern delivery and lyrical imagery cut through as strong as ever while his angular jigsaw puzzle guitar interplay with Daniel Kessler adds shape and atmosphere to each song. Behind it all is drummer Sam Fogarino and his pounding rhythms that send these new songs into the red and into dizzying heights culminating in a record that is best representation of the band as the live powerhouse they are. According to Fogarino, this newfound aggression was something that just kind of happened during the writing stage of Marauder. 

“I think it just kind of happened naturally,” he says, “I had  been listening to not necessarily aggressive music but more stuff that was recorded live than digital. Old soul like Diana Ross, Otis Redding, and Al Jackson who was this drummer who played with Bill Withers… It all had this aggression to it. You could pump your fist or hit the dancefloor. There was something that was just beyond ‘I’m going to rip this apart’. I still wanted it to move.”

Perhaps a key to the band’s longevity is that they have always made strides to reach different sounds on each of the records they have made. According to Fogarino, each member of the band brings different influences to the table and as a result, it can make for much different results than were initially intended.

“I think everybody in the band taps into that vein with our own personalities separately in some way,” he explains, “We’ve each been through a lot of experiences with this band for over the past twenty years now. It’s easy to reveal yourself… I guess when there’s that duality there are dynamics created to where it doesn’t get boring… What happens now and what makes the band good in what we beg or borrow from is each of us are doing that separately and then coming together. I would never tell the guys that I was inspired by an old Phil Collins song, but if I implement the vibe and extract something that they might not be aligned with it helps to create something completely different. Paul may be influenced by a hip-hop structure, but he’s not going to start rapping in an Interpol song. That would be ridiculous.”

Forgarino also believes that Interpol’s resilience to not be tied to that time period may have hurt them initially, but has led to their long fruitful career. “I kept thinking ‘this is a good thing, man’. To be on the fringe of a thing and not totally in the heart of it like the Strokes or other bands like that is a better thing. Being associated with that time is going to be highly perceived around the world for better or for worse. You’ll be able to go down your own path instead of going away with the time period. If you’re able to transcend another decade then that’s just something that excelled you to independence. That’s where we got lucky.”

The band will be touring extensively behind Marauder including Philadelphia’s Union Transfer on Thursday Aug. 23, a free record release show at Brooklyn’s House of Vans this Friday, Boston’s Orpheum Theatre on Sept. 11 and culminating in a huge hometown headline show at Madison Square Garden on February 16th with support from younger Matador labelmates Car Seat Headrest and Snail Mail. As for whether this new crop of guitar-centric bands that had been influenced by Interpol gives him hope for the future, Fogarino seemed happy with the way things are going.

“It’s not something that I’ve been paying attention to,” he says. “But the fact that it could start again, or at least feels like it can is cool. To support young bands like this that are playing so called guitar music proves that it’s just an opinion. Guitar music has been ‘dying’ ever since it started. We’ve been hearing ‘Punk’s not dead’ longer than punk has been around. When you circle back, it’s music. If it’s good it’s not going to rely on its style or its fashionability. It will start to exist on its own merit.”