Interpol bring the 80s sounds into today

In the past three months Interpol have played with three of the biggest bands of the past 20 years. U2, the Pixies, and Coldplay have all requested the New York band's services. They have also played alongside Queens of the Stone Age — not the biggest band, but, like themselves, one of the coolest.

However singer Paul Banks doesn't seem too excited by the exposure. "Their booking agent calls our booking agent and goes, 'Hey, do you want to play a show?" he offers flippantly.

He seems wary, almost defensive, about being linked with bands such as U2 and Coldplay and the mainstream connotations attached to it.

"We take opportunities when they come our way and in the case of the bands we're discussing, especially Queens, [they] are on a level in the mainstream where the music is still very good and legitimate. So there is no sense that we're selling out, and trying to bite off more than we can chew. To us it's just another opportunity to play with a great band."

Interpol are hip. And you can just imagine Banks, the hip singer, standing in Manhattan's Union Square wearing a stylish suit and tie, his blond helmet of hair hanging lank, being blase about fielding yet another media interview on his cellphone.

Interpol tour New Zealand for the first time in their career playing Auckland's St James on August 2 and Victoria University in Wellington on August 3.

Banks isn't unhelpful — in explaining the inner workings of a band he is an expert — but Antics, the follow-up to Interpol's 2002 debut, Turn On the Bright Lights, was released last year and you can tell he's sick and tired of talking about it.

This is, after all, the band who said it was a relief to get Antics out so they didn't have to spend as much time talking about how they sound like Joy Division. We don't go there today.

Instead, let's look at those inner workings. Guitarist Daniel Kessler recruited drummer Sam Fogarino, bass player Carlos Dengler and Banks for Interpol in 1998.

Kessler approached Banks because he was walking along the street carrying a guitar. The pair knew each other vaguely because they spent a month and a half in Paris together on a school programme. "But we weren't fast friends," says Banks.

"Music was what I wanted to do with my life ever since I was 15. But I wasn't interested in playing with anybody else. I was doing solo stuff because I'm not a great collaborator," confesses Banks.

"I didn't want to be in a band but when I saw the talent in the song writing, that drew me in in spite of myself. This is probably the only band I could be in."

After the release of their debut album, Turn on the Bright Lights, in 2002, they toured for 15 months. When they got back to their New York rehearsal space, Banks says the band had a lot of "pent-up energy" and were "gagging" to write new material.

"I think you might have been fishing for me to say something about the pressures of the follow-up," he presumes. He is right because Bright Lights was a stunning debut, even if it was a band still relying heavily on their influences. But according to Banks: "We wrote the songs [for Antics] very quickly and there was no thought about how it was going to sound." Then he pauses and recoils: "Actually, after the writing of the first couple of songs, I was a little anxious, like, '[Expletive], who knows if it's going to come out? Are we still going to have ideas?'"

They did. On Antics they successfully shed their influences and songs such as Evil, Slow Hands and Public Pervert are catchy, hypnotic and icy cool. When you're listening to it just close your eyes, clench your fist and feel the tension whitening your knuckles. It is good, tense stuff.

"It's not tense as far as the energy among ourselves," says Banks. "But it is tense when we get into arguments, which we frequently do, as far as how a song should go. The architecture and editing of any song, that is a big, lengthy argument between Carlos, Daniel and I.

"We can have a three-hour rehearsal, two hours of which are arguing over the structure of a song and no music happening at all. There may be multiple two-hour argument over one song. They're more like debates, kind of. It's all very diplomatic, but we've kind of evolved a system of great diplomacy. It's a functioning democracy basically.

"We had a strong nucleus about how we were going to function as a band long before we had a record deal, because in the same way I wouldn't be in a band with people who I could tell what to do, no one in this band will allow themselves to be told what to do either.

"The spirit of the band has never changed and if it did then I'm sure we would break up."