Muzz have announced details of a new EP, ‘Covers’. The four-track set, which sees the trio of Paul Banks, Josh Kaufman and Matt Barrick reimagine songs by Arthur Russell, Bob Dylan, MazzyStar and Tracy Chapman, will be released digitally on December 9th.
‘Covers’ is as much an illustration of the bands collective inspirations as it is a sonic testament to their expansive imagination and fluidity as a musical outfit, imbuing the singular classics with a sense of wonder and awe that come together to a short but powerfully holistic set.
Arthur Russell’s ‘Nobody Wants A Lonely Heart’ is deconstructed to its mesmerising foundations, with Banks‘ baritone gliding over Kaufman’s submerged piano and Barrick’s gentle shuffle. Bob Dylan’s ‘Girl From The North Country’ is recast in a cobweb of acoustic guitars, swooning slides and ghostly vocals that slow-burn to a mystical crescendo. Elsewhere, Banks’ invocation of Mazzy Star’s ‘Fade Into You’ is fraught with raw emotion, set to a backdrop of palpitating percussion and arching strings. Tracy Chapman’s ‘For You’ brings the set to a buoyant and moving close, punctuated by fluttering guitar runs, cinematic pads, and Banks’ soulful delivery.
“Nobody Wants a Lonely Heart” · Muzz under exclusive license to Matador Records
The arrival of Muzz’s self-titled debut LP has been similarly low key, only for its captivating blend of melancholic indie-rock to immediately betray the long game behind its creation.
A meeting of New York minds Interpol vocalist and guitarist Paul Banks, polymath producer Josh Kaufman and drummer Matt Barrick, late of Jonathan Fire Eater and the Walkmen – Muzz have been tooling around for half a decade at this point. Appropriately, their first album together has a lived-in quality, with its intricacies brought to life by the relaxed chemistry of the performances. “In the studio there’s so much leeway,” Kaufman says. “All you’re trying to do is express a moment in music.”
Kaufman and Banks have been friends since they were teenagers attending the same Spanish high school, later reconnecting after moving to New York in separate instalments. Barrick crossed their paths as a key cog in the city’s early 2000s indie-rock machine, eventually playing in Banks + Steelz (Banks’s project with Wu-Tang Clan supremo RZA) and sitting in on Kaufman’s sessions with Craig Finn for the Hold Steady frontman’s 2017 solo LP We All Want The Same Things.
Muzz began to coalesce in 2015 as embryonic arrangements were fleshed out jam-style, but it would take time for the trio to perceive themselves as a band who did conventional things like release records. “I think it was just the fact that we were feeling like there was something there to offer people beyond these sort of intimate conversations between the three of us,” Kaufman says of the decision to break into the open.
Muzz, compounds the immediately recognizable vocals of Interpol frontman Paul Banks and the similarly familiar drumming of The Walkmen’s Matt Barrick, with the additional contribution of guitarist Josh Kaufman from contemporary folk newcomers Bonny Light Horseman. The result is a surprisingly comfortable pastiche of the three artists’ distinct sounds, compounding the uneasiness of Interpol, the playfulness of The Walkmen, and the tranquil twang of BLH.
After spending sections of 2019 working on Finn’s I Need A New War and the riotous guitar blowout of the Hold Steady’s Thrashing Thru The Passion, Muzz offered Kaufman the chance to test his mettle as a composer and performer while also marshalling the troops from the control room. Rather than viewing them as competing disciplines, though, he prefers to zoom out and see them as complementary roles.
“I don’t know that I see a distinction,” he says. “I feel like when you put a bunch of musicians in a room, you’re kinda dealing with a co-production no matter what. If I’m producing a record, and that’s my job, then I’ll do my best to shepherd it, and to give my two cents, and try to advise.
“But, really, I’m just trying to sound good with everyone, sorta walking the walk a little bit. Like, ‘Maybe if I do my best to bring what I love to this, then that’s going to come out in the people around me too, and we’ll end up with something that’s better than the sum of its parts.’ That’s where I’m coming from. When I go in to work with Muzz, or with anyone else, I’m walking in the same way.”
Here, Kaufman was tasked with facilitating the band’s open-hearted approach to collaboration. As a multi-instrumentalist he went from sitting at a blown out upright piano to laying down large swathes of the record’s guitars, while Banks and Barrick also embraced the lack of defined roles. “I don’t think anyone’s afraid of playing anything,” Kaufman says. “Sometimes we’re in a room together and we’re switching. Paul will hop on drums, Matt will hop on guitar, and I’ll play bass. Maybe I’ll sit at the piano, Paul will play guitar, and Matt will play drums.
“You don’t have to have the command over the breadth of the instrument that you would if you were sitting down to be a soloist. I think that’s been really helpful, and there’s not a lot of ego. Everybody’s open to one another’s creative strengths in the moment, however those might alter depending on what we’re working on. It’s always composition-dependent, right? You can get the most technically amazing musician to come and play something and you can be incredibly unmoved by it. I think that looking for the most moving contributions is usually the barometer.”
Muzz strikes gold in its combination of rich melody and desolate grandeur, landing somewhere between the gloom-pop of arch storyteller Bill Callahan and the National’s widescreen emotional inquisitions, the mechanics of which Kaufman knows better than most after collaborating with the Dessner brothers and Scott Devendorf as producer of Grateful Dead legend Bob Weir’s 2016 LP Blue Mountain.
“I think that’s the natural democracy of the three of us,” Kaufman observes. “We all lean in that direction, but it took a little while to find out that we lean that way. It’s funny, you sit in a room and you play something loud and rocking and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s so much fun.’ And it is so much fun to have those releases. But then you go into the control room and listen to it back and go, ‘Man, I don’t know if I want to listen to this, though.’ There was a lot of back and forth about whether we were making music that we wanted to listen to. I think that was a big X on the map.”
The album takes a textural approach to its guitars, weaving delicate lead lines and warm ringing chords throughout songs that benefit from swelling strings and the washes of brass that have become something of a Kaufman go-to. “I think all three of us are passionate about the guitar,” he says. “Matt and I are really into older guitars, and more oddball models. I think that it was another voice.
“There are a few songs that we wrote as guitar parts, like Bad Feeling. That was a guitar [line] first and then Paul wrote to that, and Trinidad was a guitar part that Paul had, but for the most part on these songs the guitar was a voice. There’s a few songs where it’s like a strummy thing, but the foundation isn’t always guitar. It just helps with the mood of everything.”
Kaufman’s description of the guitar as a voice is apt but it also raises an issue for a band such as Muzz, who openly toy with the dreaded ‘supergroup’ tag. Banks’s bandmates are operating in tandem with one of indie-rock’s most recognisable and oft-imitated vocalists, adding an extra layer of consideration lest their guitar work stray too close to Interpol territory. “Maybe I have the advantage of understanding intellectually that it’s iconic to people, but then emotionally I’m just connected to my friend,” Kaufman observes.
“I’m sensitive to it, but I’m not afraid of it. We would build a kind of sonic world of tones that we really loved and then put a guitar line on top. Paul would write his vocal melody to that as harmony parts, or as a doubled part. A good example of that is the song Evergreen, where there’s this weird slide guitar that had been living for a couple of years. Paul had been saying he wanted to do something with it. One day we’re in the studio and he added the vocal to it in such a cool way. I had imagined muting that guitar, but he really liked it there as something to sing to. When I say that the guitar functions as a voice in this music, that’s kind of a way that Paul and I can sing together.”
In the studio, Kaufman ran the guitars through a relatively organic setup. He generated the record’s reverb and tremolo effects through a handful of Fender amps – chiefly Princeton and Deluxe models – and daisy chained channels on the console in pursuit of the correct amount of comforting fuzz. They leaned hard on the Guilds in their respective collections – Banks’s jumbo acoustic in open tuning, Kaufman’s Starfire IV and an S-90 fitted with a Bigsby – alongside a 60s-era Gibson 12 string, plus a handful of Telecasters, Silvertones and Danelectros.
“I also have a Strat that I like to play DI,” Kaufman adds. “It’s an old ’71 that I put Lollar pickups in. Man, they are so beautiful. The first time I got them in they were quieter than the stock pickups, and I was a little miffed. But, oh no. When I A/B’d them against older recordings I was like, ‘These are so beautiful.’ You just have to turn up the amp a little bit more and you get all this air.”
Actually, Kaufman devoting time to a new set of pickups and finding buried treasure mirrors Muzz’s slow-burn journey nicely. “Developing the sound of the band over five years or so, to use the parlance of right now ‘in quarantine’, it feels good to finally come out with it,” he says. “Unfortunately, we’re coming out into a vacuum. But I do think there are some benefits to that. People really need music right now, and maybe they are spending time more closely with it. I think there’s a light there.”
The recording of Muzz, the group’s first album together, was a few years in the making, and who better than the group’s three members to walk us through the twelve songs’ inceptions? which dropped on June 5th via Matador Records—and read on for the songwriters’ insight.
1. “Bad Feeling”
Paul: Josh and Matt wrote and recorded this song (without horns) one afternoon when I had left the studio in Woodstock to drive back to NYC. They emailed it to me with the rest of the music we had worked on together in that session. It spoke to me immediately. I felt it was like a song for your pocket. Like Will Oldham’s “I Send My Love to You.” It sounded like a sigh.
I waited until I felt inspired to write the lyrics. That happened at the beach after I visited with a surf bro—an American named Joey—who lives in Central America with his wife and child, and who at that time was preparing to move completely off the grid—deep into the wild—to run a remote surf lodge. And he was ecstatic about it. The opening lyrics and the chorus are directly inspired by Joey, in honor of the monumentality of his hope.
2. “Evergreen”
Josh: “Evergreen” was built around a slide guitar instrumental that I had written and recorded years before we started actively Muzz-ing. It was a tune that Matt and Paul both dug and we had a blast layering onto the recordings I had in the archive. Love the Flutes by Stuart Bogie on this and the sweetness of Annie Nero and Cassandra Jenkin’s chorus harmonies. I had always imagined just muting the melody line and letting Paul construct something new there, but when I heard him sing to the slide melody it really unlocked the whole jam. Amazing rolling groove by Matt here as well…kinda love that it just goes for a while at the end. I am literally singing into the pickups of one of my old guitars for those little background patterns.
3. “Red Western Sky”
Paul: “Red Western” was written and recorded up in Woodstock at The IsOkOn. Fairly early on. We improvised the beginning as part of a jam, and then Josh sat down at the piano and fleshed out the chorus progression, and then I wrote vocals all in the same day. I remember sitting in the control room listening to Matt lay his beat down, and feeling an upswell of excitement—a sudden sense that the song was destined to be dope. Later we added horns, which were such a great addition on this track.
The song had a dusty mood of Americana to my ear, musically. So when I sat down to write vocals I just immediately saw myself as a character on a highway in Nevada—going west with the sunset as a guide. Spirit quest, Jim Morrisson shit. That’s what informed the lyrics. I think there’s some Cormac McCarthy influence as well.
4. “Patchouli”
Josh: This song got me thinking about our band’s ability to spontaneously compose songs together. It’s the first of a few that were concocted through a vibey jam resulting in a tune. I remember this one moving very quickly. I was strumming Paul’s Guild in some alt tuning that I now forget, Paul improvised that guitar arpeggio, and Matt moved the whole groove along with his breezy shaker tom-tom, kick pattern. After that we added an old Crumar which has those sweeping brass filters on it, bass, and a couple other textures, and Paul wrote his vocal line and lyrics to that… “Hey mom, I made it so your light burns / Hey mom, I’ve changed.” Nice one, PB!
5. “Everything Like It Used to Be”
Josh:“Everything Like It Used to Be” is another jam that is based off one of my older demos. In the original version I had all of these strange samples of people sighing on the backbeats going into the choruses. Paul liked those, but after hearing his voice on the track we decided to remove some of those (as he likes to call them) “ice-y modern details” in place of a more classic track—strings by Rob Moose are always really special, and he really built on the emotion here. Matt and I re-cut the rhythm track in the same room to get a sweet and blurry bleed between the instruments. As with a lot of art, while it moves through time, it takes on new meaning. That occured unpredictably fast here with the line, “I want everything like it used to be,” which started to feel like a relatable lifeline at the onset of the current health crisis.
6. “Broken Tambourine”
Josh: Funnily enough, Paul was asleep when Matt and I cracked open “Broken Tambourine.” It was recorded early spring up in Woodstock, NY—hence the babybird songs built into the piano track. Dan Goodwin (our renaissance man engineer/co-producer) brilliantly set up and tracked Matt and I writing this song while we had the porch door open, so it’s a piano, drums, Catskills nature “live-off the floor” kinda sound. PB walked in as we were finishing and loved the feeling of the track, he made a few suggestions and then got to work on the vocal immediately. This track also deals pretty directly with isolation and feels particularly connected to the pandemic moment we’re all going through.
7. “Knuckleduster”
Matt:Josh and I recorded the basics for this song at my practice space in Philly in 2015, a couple years before we would get together with Paul and really start working on the Muzz album. We tried rerecording it a few times, but the original demo had an energy that was hard to beat so we ended up building on that. The vocals for this one were the last thing we recorded for the record, so this one is full circle.
8. “Chubby Checker”
Paul: This was a piano riff I was playing around with in the studio, and Josh said, “Let’s record that!” So we jammed it out with Josh on keyboards, me on piano, and Matt on drums. And we recorded to one mic. Then Josh layered the guitar parts and bass on top. His first bassline reminded Matt of Chubby Checker—hence the name. But we scrapped that bass take anyway and got the current one instead. We kept the nonsense working title because we like a little nonsense here and there.
The piece has a unique atmosphere and tone for the record. But it reminds me of Can for some reason, and that makes me happy. The song lived as an instrumental for, like, a year. The only part I wrote at the time we recorded was “Back on your feet how you planned it.” Then at the last minute I finished the words—maybe the last day of recording. One of my favorite tracks.
9. “How Many Days”
Matt: This was one of the earliest songs to come together for the record. During a Banks and Steelz soundcheck in Phoenix, I was messing around and playing this beat—and Paul started playing a chord progression from a song he had already demoed. There was just one thing missing: a ripping Josh guitar solo.
10. “Summer Love”
Matt: A deep cut but one of my favorites. This one started from one of Josh’s demos. Great fluting by Stuart Bogie. I was trying to mimic the sound of an old Rhythm Ace drum machine with real drums and percussion. I like how this one is relaxed and just rides out on that main vibe and vocal line. Was really fun hearing all of Paul’s vocal ideas on this one.
1. “All Is Dead to Me”
Matt: Most of the album we recorded upstate at the IsOkOn with D. James Goodwin, but this one was done at Silent Partner, a studio Paul and I started in Philly. Josh was on tour and we went to the studio the day after his show. He went straight to the Hammond organ and made good use of the built-in reverb, while I wailed on a strange-sounding cymbal covered in duct tape. When he was gone I got to sneak in a couple guitar licks, but later he put me in my place with a ripping guitar solo. Love the brass on this one by The Westerlies.
12.“Trinidad”
Paul: This track was just a guitar sketch and lyric that I had laying around. We tried to build the song into something longer and more complex structurally, but ultimately settled on the original minimal form. I tracked the guitar and the vocal at the same time, so the recording sounds and feels really live, I think. Then Josh layered guitar and bass; Matt played to it; and then The Westerlies played horns and voila, that’s how the song came to be. Josh says the song is “funereal,” which influenced how he wanted the horns to sound: a little durgey, a little somber. I think it works nicely.
Muzz’s self-titled debut is out now on Matador Records.
Muzz is a new band that features Paul Banks of Interpol, Matt Barrick of The Walkmen, and Josh Kaufman of Bonny Light Horseman. They are releasing their self-titled debut album on June 5th via Matador Records. Now they have shared a new live acoustic video of the three members performing the album’s previous single “Bad Feeling” separately and remotely from their homes in these socially distant times. Banks was in Edinburgh, Kaufman in Brooklyn, and Barrick in Philadelphia. It’s the band’s first ever live recording.
Previously Muzz had shared their first song, “Bad Feeling.” It was a little more lush and chill than the post-punk assault of Interpol. Then they shared another new song, “Broken Tambourine,” via a video for the track. Then the album’s third single was “Red Western Sky,” .
Banks and Kaufman have known each other since they were teenagers and both have also worked with Barrick before. Muzz’s earliest recordings date back to 2015. All three members wrote, arranged, and performed the album. And while Banks is usually the sole lyricist in Interpol, here all three members contributed to the lyrics.
“Josh has more training as a theory musician while Paul comes from a different perspective,” Barrick said about the process in a previous press release. “You never know how Paul’s gonna approach a song, lyrically and melodically, so it’s always unusual and exciting. Everyone is open to everyone else’s ideas. I think three is a great number of people for a band. We all had a big hand in everything.”
Kaufman had this to say about the band’s sound: “The music has this weird, super removed vibe but is also personal and emotional at the same time. If something felt natural in a simple way, we left it. I’d never heard Paul’s voice framed like that—a string section, horns, guitars—we know none of that is visionary but it felt classic and kind of classy.”
The band’s name stems from the word Kaufman used to describe the band’s sound, or as the press release put it, “the music’s subtle, analog quality and texture.”
Summing up the album Banks said: “Ultimately, the music speaks for itself. We have a genuine, organic artistic chemistry together. It’s partly a shared musical taste from youth, as with me and Josh, but then it’s also the souls of my friends that resonate with me when expressed through music. I think it’s cosmic.”
Interpol (which also features Daniel Kessler and Sam Fogarino) released a new EP, A Fine Mess, last year via Matador. It followed their 2018 album Marauder. Outside of Interpol, Banks has released two solo albums (2009’s Julian Plenti is… Skyscraper and 2012’s Banks) and one album with RZA as Banks & Steelz (2016’s Anything But Words).
Muzz, is the new project of Paul Banks (Interpol), Josh Kaufman (producer/multi-instrumentalist and one third of Bonny Light Horseman), and Matt Barrick (drummer of Jonathan Fire*Eater,The Walkmen, and Fleet Foxes’ touring band), have announced their self-titled, debut album, due out June 5th on Matador Records.
The phrase “Interpol side project” should rightly send a shiver down your spine, and yet somehow Muzz (the new band from Paul Banks plus producer Josh Kaufman and The Walkmen’s Matt Barrick) is something special. The trio went to high school together and that lived-in feel permeates the music they make together. “Bad Feeling” is their first release and combines a gorgeous guitar tone with jazz flourishes and heavenly backing vocals.
Muzz was born out of longstanding friendship and collaboration. Banks and Kaufman have known each other since childhood, attending high school together in Spain before separately moving to New York. There, they independently crossed paths with Barrick while running in similar music circles. They kept in touch in the following years: Barrick drummed in Banks + Steelz and on some of Kaufman’s production sessions; Kaufman helped on Banks’ early Julian Plenti solo endeavour; various demos were collaborated on, and a studio was co-bought. The self-titled debut album, written, arranged and performed by all three, is dark and gorgeous, expansive and soulful. No matter the sonic direction, Muzz goes there effortlessly and with maximum emotional charge.
This is a new band. Now they have announced their self-titled debut album and shared another song from it, “Red Western Sky,” via a video for the single Muzz is due out June 5th via Matador and features two previously shared singles, “Bad Feeling” and “Broken Tambourine.” Check out the “Red Western Sky” video tracks below.
Their first song, “Bad Feeling.” It was a little more lush and chill than the post-punk assault of Interpol and was one of our favourite songs. Then they shared another new song, “Broken Tambourine,” via a video for the track.
Banks and Kaufman have known each other since they were teenagers and both have also worked with Barrick before. Muzz’s earliest recordings date back to 2015. All three members wrote, arranged, and performed the album. And while Banks is usually the sole lyricist in Interpol, here all three members contributed to the lyrics.
“Josh has more training as a theory musician while Paul comes from a different perspective,” Barrick says about the process in a press release. “You never know how Paul’s gonna approach a song, lyrically and melodically, so it’s always unusual and exciting. Everyone is open to everyone else’s ideas. I think three is a great number of people for a band. We all had a big hand in everything.”
Kaufman had this to say about the band’s sound: “The music has this weird, super removed vibe but is also personal and emotional at the same time. If something felt natural in a simple way, we left it. I’d never heard Paul’s voice framed like that—a string section, horns, guitars—we know none of that is visionary but it felt classic and kind of classy.”
The band’s name stems from the word Kaufman used to describe the band’s sound, or as the press release puts it, “the music’s subtle, analog quality and texture.”
Summing up the album Banks says: “Ultimately, the music speaks for itself. We have a genuine, organic artistic chemistry together. It’s partly a shared musical taste from youth, as with me and Josh, but then it’s also the souls of my friends that resonate with me when expressed through music. I think it’s cosmic.”
Interpol (which also features Daniel Kessler and Sam Fogarino) released a new EP, A Fine Mess last year also via Matador. It followed their 2018 album Marauder. Outside of Interpol, Banks has released two solo albums (2009’s Julian Plenti is... Skyscraper and 2012’s Banks and one album with RZA as Banks & Steelz (2016’s Anything But Words).
Muzz’ self-titled album out June 5th, 2020 on Matador Records.
Paul Banks of Interpol has formed a new band, Muzz, that also features Matt Barrick (The Walkmen) and Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman). On Tuesday they shared a new song, “Broken Tambourine,” via a video for the track. The single is out now via Matador Records. Interpol have such a specific sound that it’s also nice to hear Banks branch out with his solo and side projects.
Earlier this month, we were introduced to a new indie supergroup called Muzz when a song called “Bad Feeling” quietly appeared online. Matt Barrick (the former Walkmen drummer who also plays in Fleet Foxes’ touring band), Josh Kaufman, the multi-instrumentalist who’s played with everyone from the National to Hiss Golden Messenger to his current project Bonny Light Horseman. The members all go way back — Banks and Barrick have known each other since they were teens, and also played together with Banks’ RZA collab Banks & Steelz — and they finally got together and formed a band themselves.
The song Broken Tambourine – in a nutshell – is about sadness and joy, and the uneven distribution of those elements. When I started thinking about imagery to accompany the song, a lone and lonely moon man came to my mind. I wanted to show his trials and tribulations, his aloneness and his wonder. And I felt that would nicely amplify the thinking behind the lyrics.
I contacted my friend and sometime collaborator Griffin Frazen to help me bring the idea to life. His vision and style are immaculate and we jived immediately. It was a blast refining the ideas and the world of the moon man in collaboration with Griffin.
Previously Muzz shared their first song, “Bad Feeling.” It was a little more lush and chill than the post-punk assault of Interpol . Not much more is known about the band, such as whether or not the singles are taken from a forthcoming EP or album. Banks and Kaufman have known each other since they were teenagers and both have also worked with Barrick before. Muzz’s earliest recordings date back to 2015.
With “Bad Feeling” being billed as something of a soft opening, today we’re getting the real introduction to Muzz by way of the new single called “Broken Tambourine.” It’s also their first single to officially come out via Matador. “Bad Feeling” was already a promising preview of this new band, and “Broken Tambourine” is probably even better.
“Broken Tambourine” begins with a sombre piano introduction courtesy of Kaufman, before building into a brooding thing of hushed, meditative grandeur. Banks intones over piano and clarinet, while Barrick’s percussion rumbles in the distance. You can certainly hear a bit of each of their projects colliding here; in a way, it kind of feels like Banks’ response to a sound we might normally associate with the National.
The classic sophomore LP, available in a limited white vinyl pressing and available for the first time ever as a coloured LP. After two years of seemingly endless tours, the quartet returned in early 2004 to Peter Katis’s Tarquin Studios in Bridgeport, Conn., to record their second album. They had already debuted a handful of songs earmarked for Antics on the road: Length of Love, Narc, C’mere. Meanwhile, having revisited – and reinvented– the material from Bright Lights night after night, they discovered new strengths. There was more room for experimentation in these songs, for toying with arrangements and intricacies of individual parts, than on their debut.
The acclaimed record, which was originally released back in 2004, is set to be reissued on limited-edition white LP. It will arrive on September 27 – the album’s original release date – via Matador Records.
All 10 tracks from ‘Antics’ will appear on the reissue, including ‘Evil’, ‘Slow Hands’, and ‘Narc’
With Antics, Interpol has delivered a disc even more engaging than its celebrated predecessor, without sacrificing any of the depth that has made them such an important band for so many. The songs are at once catchier and more variegated, revealing themselves over time to a degree heard on few current releases, and nothing is ever obvious. Frontman Paul Banks describes, “A lot of time, there are specific topics or events that that inspire the songs, but it’s not explicit in my lyrics.“ Indeed, with Interpol, things are rarely what they seem.
Interpol is a New York-based rock band formed in 1998. The band currently consists of Paul Banks (vocals, guitar), Daniel Kessler (guitar) and Sam Fogarino (drums).
Interpol’s second album ‘Antics‘ 15th Anniversary out now on Matador Records
For their sixth album,”Marauder“, Interpol come out swinging. English-American singer and bassist Paul Banks, lead guitarist Daniel Kessler and drummer Sam Fogarino have been playing together now for 21-years, about the age they each were when the band formed back in 1997. The recording for this record began in 2016 with a 15th anniversary tour of the band’s first and classic album Turn On The Bright Lights sandwiched in between the recording session. The band took on famed producer Dave Fridmann, known for his band Mercury Rev but also for producing music by Flaming Lips, Weezer, Sleater-Kinney and many more, just to give an idea of his visceral aesthetic.
For a sense of Marauder, Paul Banks here dives into detail and unveils some of the thoughts that went into this record.
1. “If You Really Love Nothing”
One of the swing jams. Sam is rocking a shuffle and the rhythmic poise is uncommon for us.
The song has some of my favorite lyrics: “If you really love nothing, everybody’s made up, everybody’s losing.” It’s a similar sentiment as expressed by “Stella.” “The building fronts are just fronts.” Both songs, I suppose, center around a narrator who is perplexed by a woman with unwieldy psychological pathologies involving paranoia and dissociation. This song, like “Stella,” suggests the narrator gives up on this woman ultimately. The choruses feature the best guitar interplay on the record.
2. “The Rover”
“The Rover” was one of the first songs we got cooking. Daniel introduced the riff and the rest came very quickly — bass, drums and vocals.
I wanted to keep the bass and guitar simple in the verses. I felt that the counterpoint of a drone against Daniel’s poppy, sharp progression would provide a bottled-up energy that we release when the chorus arrives and the bass and guitars diverge.
The lyrics are about a seductive, charismatic cult leader who has no trouble amassing young followers. His message is one of inclusion, obedience, hedonism, and salvation. The end is nigh, so come and see me.
3. “Complications”
Another swinger. Sam really stretching out and having fun. One of my favorite songs. I feel that the “The Rover” and “Complications” exist in the same world — in the same movie. If “The Rover” were walking through the desert on an acid trip, then “Complications” is the song playing in the jukebox of the dive bar where he winds up — the come-down at sundown.
4. “Flight of Fancy”
This song has a very strange chord progression from Daniel. I think in my mind it begins on the 5th chord of the melody and then plays out like: 5, 1, 2, 3, 4. But if you ask Daniel, the order of the chords is as you hear them: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Basically I think he’s starting his melody in the “wrong” place. And he thinks I’m nuts. We are probably both right.
But that difference of orientation lent itself to a fun and fluid arrangement between bass and two guitars. I think it would be difficult for someone else to learn the song because it doesn’t really seem to follow any rules. To play it correctly, I first had to memorize my bass pattern before I could feel it.
Lyrically the song begins as a lover’s lament — much like “NYSMAW” — the idea is, why can’t I know you?
Then the chorus opens into a defiant assertion. A claiming of agency. My thoughts are my own. And I am my thoughts. It suggests in the feel and tone (and in my mind) that one day we will not just be defending our right to privacy and free-speech. But we may some day find ourselves defending our freedom of thought. It’s another song, like “Surveillance,” that thematically is akin to an episode of Black Mirror. I just like the idea of reclaiming the right to free thought.
5. “Stay In Touch”
Our gothic jam. Daniel loved the simple ominous descending bassline and never let me change it. 🙂 His riff has always struck us — it has a beautiful hollow, woody timber — hooky but vague. Moody and distant, but sticky and inviting. Producer Dave Fridmann loved it immediately for how it invited his ear. It’s amorphous. We slaved to make it hold together as a song while maintaining the nebulous quality of Daniel’s languid shifts. The third verse features a cool Eastern or African sounding guitar part from Daniel. Very sparse but filled with kinetic energy. It inspired my second best riff on the record, lovingly referred to as “Cuban Bill Gates.”
Sam brought the flavor on this one.
6. “Mountain Child”
In my mind the narrator is perhaps the same character from the “Rover” — a dusty man. Here, he’s in love with a girl who is in love with nature. She is a social outcast by choice. She prefers the wild. But the narrator can see her — knows the ilk of her spirit and chooses to follow her.
In the third verse he is bitten by a venomous snake. And as the song proceeds, his consciousness breaks down as the toxin invades his senses. He becomes nonsensical, fevered: “My mountain child is strange and I’m a kind of hero. We used to rule back then. What did we used to rule back then?” [These] are his last thoughts before he perishes.
The outro features my fourth favorite riff, but it’s really just an inversion of what Daniel is playing.
7. “NYSMAW”
Just an easy breezy pop rocker. Dancing, punchy energy. Daniel coordinated the snare accents to emphasize his stabbing, off-kilter guitar hits. Lyrically the song is about wanting to understand more of one’s partner. It’s the frustration that we cannot know all and the frustration that she in fact may know all of me.
8. “Surveillance”
Sam and Daniel often championed this song’s disco beat and high-energy propulsion. Harmonically it’s a strange journey. Daniel’s chord pattern begins as a four-chord pattern, then he adds a chord to his sequence, making it five-chords. Then he adds a sixth chord. It’s like a round that acquires a new facet with each pass. It gives an illusion that there is no clear anchor to the verses, but there is always the four-chord nested pattern. [It] never rests.
Sam brings a special energy on this track. Signature Sam dance style. The bass and drum interplay here was something we worked on diligently. If it came out correctly we should be flamming. This song features my third best guitar riff, nicknamed “Bill Gates.”
(It appears in the outro.)
9. “Number 10”
This song was destined to be a B-side. I had written a fun surfy baseline that jived well with the drums but I was never super stoked on the song. In the studio we just recorded it because we had some time. But there was no second guitar and no vocals.
When we tracked it, it came out really explosive and fun. The additional guitars and vocals were written in a few hours over two afternoons. No fuss no muss.
The lyrics are about an office drama. The narrator is tired of his supervisor, Ella breathing down his neck. She’s a tough boss. But there is also a love there, a secret attraction. A mutual secret attraction. But alas, business is business and their desire is never sated. I think that feeling of frustration and desire suits the temperment of the music. The flighty intensity. Pent up lust.
I love this song. It’s the loosest, most spontaneous and unpolished track on the record, and I’m proud of its garage feel and grit.
10. “Party’s Over”
Popping pills and masturbating to Instagram. (Fiction!) Also an anarchist call to arms.
11. “Probably Matters”
It’s like an impressionist/surrealist film about a defunct relationship — the remorse, guilt, and shame that can nag us through the haze of afterthought.
Interpol’s new album Marauder out on Matador Records on August 24th.
Interpol used their last single “The Rover” to follow the meandering adventures of a guru in the making, but now, in a follow-up track entitled “Number 10,” the band tackle subject matter a little more familiar: the modern office romance. The new song,is the second single from the band’s forthcoming sixth album Marauder.
“Number 10” describes the secret office relationship between Ella and one of her employees. Blending romantic dialogue with more standard office banter, the song begins with lead singer Paul Banks assuring that “Your secret’s safe here,” before Ella encourages her employee to “Go and talk to Steve about it.” In compliance with standard office procedure, we can only assume Steve is the head of HR.
By the sound of the track’s fast-paced dueling guitars and anxious lyrics, “Number 10” is a far cry from a love song as this pair navigates the tricky ethical waters and power dynamics of interoffice romance. In a Beats 1 interview with Zane Lowe, Banks described the grungy new track as an attempt to “sound faithful to a live recording.” .
Interpol recently announced an expanded tour to support Marauder,
The Fat Angel Sings 