Interpol

Almost everything that gets repeated about Interpol starts off wrong. Paul Banks does not lead them: the guitarist Daniel Kessler founded them in 1997, at New York University, and it was he who recruited the others one by one. Nor is there a main songwriter, because the songs were put together between the four of them from a guitar idea of Kessler's. And the comparison with Joy Division, which for twenty years served to introduce them, is not a lineage they claimed but a label they rejected with irritation. What is true is what the usual praise mentions without naming it: that melodic bass carrying half the early discography had an owner, his name was Carlos Dengler, and in 2010 he recorded a record and left before it went on sale.

Kessler built the band one by one

Daniel Kessler was studying in New York when he began looking for musicians, in 1997. He met Carlos Dengler in a philosophy class; Paul Banks by another route, and he brought him in first as a guitarist before he ended up in front of the microphone. The original drummer was Greg Drudy, who left the group in 2000 and was replaced by Sam Fogarino, the only one of the four who was not there at the start.

That genesis explains the sound better than any label. Interpol's songs do not come from a singer-songwriter handing out parts: they come from two guitars that coil around each other without treading on one another, a bass carrying the main melody, dry drums and a low voice on top. It is a four-piece weave in which no part is in charge, and that is why losing one proved so costly.

The comparison that irritated them

For years Interpol were presented as the heirs of late-seventies British post-punk. Banks denied that reading more than once, and in the driest way possible: he said he had never listened to Joy Division much. It was not a pose of belated distancing, it was the answer to a question they were asked in every interview for a decade.

It is worth separating the two things. The comparison is critical reception, not declared influence, and the band barely names those reference points when they talk about their music. That the resemblance exists for many people's ears does not make it a genealogy, and using it as a shortcut covered up for years what Interpol did have of their own: an idea about arrangement, not an idea about an era.

Two records that sounded like a city at night

Turn On the Bright Lights came out on 19 August 2002 and was Pitchfork's album of the year, at the moment when that outlet was beginning to decide what indie listened to. With "Obstacle 1" and "NYC" their trademark was fixed: half-light, suits, restraint, a nocturnal New York that the record described without postcards. It came out the same year in which The Strokes already had the city under the spotlights, and they resembled each other in nothing but the postcode.

Antics, from 27 September 2004, is the one that put them on British radio. "Evil" reached number 18 on the United Kingdom singles chart, "C'mere" number 19 and "Slow Hands" number 36. It was confirmation that the mould could take more direct songs without losing the atmosphere, and that the formula did not depend on novelty.

On both records, the line you remember the next day is usually the bass line. It is Dengler who plays the opening motif of "Evil" and who holds up most of those tracks from below instead of accompanying them. The classic praise of Interpol —"the bass out in front"— is in fact praise of a specific musician the band was about to lose.

He left before the record existed

On 9 May 2010 it was announced that Dengler was leaving Interpol. The detail that matters is the order: he had already recorded the fourth album, the self-titled Interpol, released on 7 September 2010, and he left before it reached the shops. There was no public quarrel or exchange of statements. The reasons were his own and he explained them himself: addictions to substances and to certain behaviours, and the decision to look for sobriety outside the touring circuit.

What followed was a band reorganised around the gap. Kessler and Banks shared the bass in the studio —Banks recorded most of the lines on El Pintor, from 2014, whose title is an anagram of the group's name— and at concerts the position went to a support musician. Interpol went on releasing records, Marauder in 2018 and The Other Side of Make-Believe in 2022, and filling large venues in Latin America, where their audience never let up.

But the instrument that defined their best period went back to being an accompaniment. That is the audible difference between the first two records and the rest, and it has nothing to do with inspiration or with age: it has to do with the bassist who wrote melodies stepping away from the project in 2010.

What to remember

Interpol were not Paul Banks's band, nor Joy Division's niece, nor a group of suits with good taste in melancholy. They were a quartet that Daniel Kessler put together in 1997 and that worked like a mechanism of four equal parts, with Carlos Dengler's bass doing the job that in almost all rock is done by the guitar. Turn On the Bright Lights and Antics are the record of that balance, and they are still the reason why later bands such as The xx found an audience for sombre elegance.

It is also worth holding on to how that period ended. Dengler did not leave over artistic differences or by slamming the door: he left to look after himself, and he said so in his own words when he was under no obligation to say anything. If anyone recognises that picture in their own life or in that of someone close to them, in Chile SENDA's drug and alcohol helpline, 1412, is free and anonymous. That a cult band should survive the departure of its most distinctive piece is one story; that a musician should have chosen that over the stage is another, and it is not the lesser one.

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Sources

Interpol is an American rock band formed in New York in 1997 by the guitarist Daniel Kessler, a student at New York University, who recruited Carlos Dengler (bass), whom he met in a philosophy class, and Paul Banks (vocals and guitar). The original drummer was Greg Drudy; Sam Fogarino replaced him in 2000. The band has no main songwriter: the songs were developed collectively, usually from guitar ideas by Kessler. The recurring comparison with Joy Division and late-1970s British post-punk belongs to critical reception and was rejected by the band; Paul Banks stated that he had not listened to that group much. Their debut album, "Turn On the Bright Lights", was released on 19 August 2002 and included "Obstacle 1" and "NYC"; it was chosen album of the year by Pitchfork. "Antics" was released on 27 September 2004; its singles reached numbers 18 ("Evil"), 19 ("C'mere") and 36 ("Slow Hands") on the British chart. Carlos Dengler's departure was announced on 9 May 2010; he had recorded the self-titled album "Interpol", released on 7 September 2010, and left the band before its release. Dengler attributed his departure to personal reasons, among them addictions to substances and to processes, and to the pursuit of sobriety. After his departure, the studio bass lines were handled by Banks and Kessler —Banks recorded most of those on "El Pintor" (2014), whose title is an anagram of Interpol— and the live position went to support musicians. The band subsequently released "Marauder" (2018) and "The Other Side of Make-Believe" (2022). Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, Pitchfork, the Official Charts Company and other coverage.