New York Giants

Interpol are having personnel problems. If they haven’t suffered enough intra-band conflict for one lifetime, there’s a new face knocking around that thinks they can roll right in and start calling the shots.

The first mainstream dispatch from El Pintor, their first album in four years, has just arrived in the form of a live rendition of the super-charged ‘All The Rage Back Home’ on The Late Show with David Letterman. The sound of a revitalised band, the titular late night host is so impressed that he immediately, forcibly, declares that he is joining. Wandering over to the performance area in the Ed Sullivan Theater, he starts declaring that “I’m going to be in the band, get used to it”, before doing his customary “I love these drums” bit. Only this time he sounds like he really means it.
Later that week, drummer Sam Fogarino sounds a little too calm and collected. Isn’t he concerned that his position behind the skins is at risk now that Letterman has muscled his way in?
“Oh, no we’re expanding,” the 46-year old cool customer deadpans in his New York hotel room. “I was just worried that he was going to overly covet my drum-kit. Will you guys get to see Letterman on stage with us in Dublin next February? Well that I can’t say either way. He’s a man of mystery. You can’t really tell him what to do. He did join the band but already, it’s like ‘oh well, Dave is the star!’. So we gotta watch out.”
It sounds like the Carlos D situation all over again.
“Yeah, like times 50!”
That sounds pretty impossible, given the pains the band had with their one-time bassist. Having just delivered their experimental, eponymously-titled fourth album back in 2010, Carlos decided the time was right, pre-world tour, to cut his ties with the band. Since then, there has been talk from the remaining members – frontman Paul Banks, guitarist Daniel Kessler and Fogarino himself – that the D man had been forcibly pulling them in the ‘left of centre’ direction that resulted in the strained, misfiring Interpol and that, most intriguingly, he was starting to buy into the ‘Cult Of Carlos’ that had developed among some fans. Today, Fogarino doesn’t pull any punches.
“He’s a very self-centred person, very narcissistic. When you’re around someone who just doesn’t seem like they care about anything but themselves and their own well-being, it creates a really stagnated situation. It doesn’t feel inspired. You feel like you’re just being slapped in the face all the time and that was just... enough. I’d just had enough. It became a drag to not like somebody you care for. That was the bottom line, because I don’t hate the man. It’s quite the opposite and when you’re not being extended the same courtesy that you give, it’s painful.”
Interpol initially formed back in 1997, when Kessler befriended fellow NYU philosophy student Carlos Dengler. In 2000, original drummer Greg Drudy departed and Fogarino, already 32 years of age, joined. A record deal with Matador, the seminal debut Turn On The Bright Lights and much success followed, but you do wonder whether the fact that the band were not childhood friends made the ensuing tough times and arguments all the more difficult.
“I agree with that to a certain extent,” ventures Fogarino, “ But me, Daniel and Paul do just fine, we do treat each other like brothers. Sometimes there is that thing that’s lacking between us because we haven’t known each other forever. But it’s never too late to develop a bond. There’s something that the three of us have. And Carlos? I don’t know if he’s capable of it; of possessing or receiving that kind of exchange.”
Having added bassist David Pajo and keyboardist to the line-up for the Interpol tour, Banks, Fogarino and Kessler decided to take a hiatus after their Reading and Leeds shows in 2011.
There were side-projects, with Banks working on solo material and Fogarino releasing his EmptyMansions record. There was also the feeling among fans that that might be that. Fogarino, however, was never in doubt where his bread was buttered.
“EmptyMansions is like a vacation. It’s a luxury I’ve been granted because of Interpol. When Interpol’s not working, I gotta do something, but I’m really happy to return, to get back to ‘The House Of Interpol’.”
When that time came, it became clear that some downsizing was required. Shrinking back to a core three, Interpol got back to work.
“The operation shifted,” explains Fogarino. “It became a different process with one less person. Carlos had a big opinion and a big impact on what was going to happen. So we became more of a pragmatic band. Less lofty discussions over the approach... ‘Let’s play and see what happens and not talk about playing and seeing what happens.”
The ‘eureka’ moment came when Paul Banks picked up the bass guitar. Fogarino calls it “the saving grace” of the band.
“Pure and simple. He’s a fucking great bass player. I had no idea!”
The result is El Pintor., recorded eye-to-eyeball and self-produced at Electric Lady Studios and Atomic Sound in New York City. The Spanish for “the painter”, the title is also an anagram of ‘Interpol’. Read it as a kind of ‘the essence of the band is still there, but we’ve mixed things up’ statement. The press, of course, are calling it a comeback. Banks himself has admitted that there’s a new “creative DNA” present.
His route one basslines, closely aligned to the main melodies, makes for a direct, fresh work and the smaller line-up – with some guest appearances – gives the three ample space to play to their strengths.
“We all care about the track,” says Fogarino. “It’s all about the song. I’m not looking to do my own version of ‘Moby Dick’. I’m not looking for ‘where are my two bars, I need to do a big drum fill’. Everybody’s taking a songwriter’s approach to working on our music.”
Preparing to take the finished product out on the road, first in the US, then Europe in 2015, Fogarino is craving that “immediate reaction” from the crowds.
One of the big reasons Carlos left when he did was because he couldn’t face a year and a half on the road. Banks has said that it's tough to keep “a shred of humanity” on the road. Fogarino laughs off the suggestion that staring down the barrel of a lengthy tour is a daunting thing.
“That’s all a bit dramatic!” he laughs. “It’s pretty fucking simple – we’re getting paid to go turn people on. People show up that want to be there and give such a visceral reaction to what we do on a daily basis that, I mean, wow, how hard could it be? You want to be there or you don’t, and as far as Carlos is concerned, there’s no excuses. He’s a man of extremes. He went from being Mr. Rock Star to claiming that this way of life is destroying him, so it’s all hyperbolic. It’s like ‘please just get away from me, you’re toxic.’ I’m here for the people that show up to watch us play and just forget about everything else.”
The rock ‘n’ cliches of excess also seem to be a thing of the past.
“No drugs, yeah. It just kind of came and went. At this point, I’m in my mid-40s. I don’t want to have a heart-attack on stage. It all eventually just gets rather boring. Anything that you do in excess, or repetitively – aside from playing music that is – has its end point. As long as it’s not being forced and I’m not walking on stage with a cane. It all just has to make sense and feels right... God forbid it turns into a Leonard Cohen situation though, that would be crazy. I would die, I would want to kill somebody.”
For now, he’s more than content to stay in The House Of Interpol. It seems a happy home in 2014.
“Pretty much. There is no pretence here. There’s no preface to what we do.”
As Fogarino says, however, everything has its conclusion. Even this article.

Interpol play The Olympia Theatre, Dublin, on February 10 – 12. El Pintor is out now.