New York indie heroes Interpol are shortly to arrive in Dublin to perform in full their dark masterpiece Antics, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary. It’s particularly apposite for me to be catching up over Zoom with the band’s singer, Paul Banks, whom I met previously once before – when I interviewed him in Dublin 20 years ago on the original Antics tour, no less.

Would he have imagined then that he’d be playing the anniversary tour for the album?

“I never would have imagined it,” admits the softly spoken Banks. “Not that I thought we wouldn’t be around – I just didn’t conceive of the concept! It’s crazy how time passes, it doesn’t feel like 20 years. You hear people say that kind of thing all the time, but it’s true. It doesn’t quite feel like yesterday, but it doesn’t feel like 20 years either.”

Comprised of Banks, guitarist Daniel Kessler, bassist Carlos Dengler (who eventually departed in 2010) and drummer Sam Fogarino, Interpol first made a splash with 2002’s Turn On The Bright Lights, a classic debut that drew on post-punk influences – most notably Joy Division – whilst retaining the band’s own unique personality.

There was huge anticipation for the follow-up, Antics, which duly delivered the goods. With the album enjoying almost universal critical acclaim, it became an international smash, hitting the top 10 in Ireland, and going gold in both the US and UK. It must have been a hugely exciting time for the band.

“It was a real buzz and a real ride,” nods Banks. “The first four years years after Bright Lights were all a really intense, riotous kind of voyage (laughs). That was the cliche phase of indulgence, excess, excitement and youthful abandon. We were living a real rocker lifestyle. So yeah, it was fun – we didn’t do it by halves!”

The upcoming Dublin excursion finds them hitting 3Arena – did Interpol always aspire to play venues of that size?

“No, not at all, and I really mean that,” replies Banks. “There’s no formula that anyone could really know on how to be a success creating original music. So if you’re looking for some degree of fame or money, it’s definitely the wrong profession to go into. We were definitely doing it for the love of art and music. Rather than saying, ‘What I want is that we play arenas, so let’s write songs that will get us in those venues’, it was definitely more like, ‘Let’s just write good songs.’

“It’s not to say we had no ambition. I did believe we were worthy of playing arenas, and that we had a line-up capable of creating great music. If you have those components, the sky’s the limit on how successful you might be, but the priority was just to make great stuff.”

Interpol by Ebru Yildiz

DEFINITELY A MOMENT

Similarly to the way Oasis wrote most of What’s The Story? (Morning Glory) whilst creating their debut Definitely Maybe, Interpol wrote a fair amount of Antics whilst on a creative hot streak during the assembling of Bright Lights. Writing the bulk of your second album whilst creating your first, then, seems a pretty good way of avoiding the sophomore slump.

“We had a bunch of songs in the works by the time we finished the world tour for Bright Lights,” reflects Paul. “I think ‘C’mere’ was being played live and one or two others. But it is a good approach – whatever kind of creative juju you have that’s working for you in the beginning, you should try and capitalise on it.

“Partly, it was having a lot written before we finished Bright Lights, but another part was that we just didn’t dally after that album. We kept up the creative momentum to complete Antics in a quick fashion.”

Visiting New York for the first time in the autumn of 2005, I purchased an Interpol bootleg – for which I ask Paul’s forgiveness – called Black Sessions, in the indie record store Rocks In Your Head on Prince Street, which soundtracked my stay in the city. Soundtracking periods in people’s lives, which Antics also certainly did, must perhaps be the most rewarding aspect of being a musician.

“Yeah, we wind up hearing people’s passionate stories about the music accompanying them, or acting as a soundtrack as you say,” acknowledges Paul. “Being fans of music ourselves, it really resonates, because I also have those records that take me back to a moment in my life, when that was what I was digesting and devouring. It’s a beautiful thing, an incredible companion. I think it forms part of the fabric of your memory and yourself over time, so it’s lovely to hear when people say our music did that.”

Back when I spoke to Banks on the Antics tour, many other hugely exciting bands were emerging from New York, including The Strokes, LCD Soundsystem, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV On The Radio and Liars. At the time, the singer said that, while Interpol had played many of the same venues and occasionally ran into the other groups, it didn’t necessarily feel like a scene.

Subsequently, through Lizzy Goodman’s bravura oral history of the time, Meet Me In The Bathroom, and the accompanying documentary, the noughties NYC rock scene has become renowned as a real cultural moment. Perhaps it’s only in retrospect that Banks can now see it as such.

“It was definitely a moment in time and there was definitely something happening,” he says. “It’s interesting, I suppose if you just say ‘the music scene’ in New York at that time, it was very potent and full of talented artists. I guess in some ways, I’ve often interpreted the term ‘scene’ to mean we were all hanging out together in the Factory or something. That’s what it was not. I remember getting a flyer to a Strokes show at Don Hill’s in probably 2001, and making a snarky comment about the band name.

“I didn’t mean it negatively, but I could tell by the guy’s face that he thought I was taking the piss. For some reason, I always remember that. It was probably [ex-Strokes manager] Ryan Gentles handing me the flyer! I know that Sam and Daniel knew Nick Zinner, but with a lot of the artists, we didn’t know each other personally. That’s why I say it wasn’t a scene in that sense.

“But if you look at it like there were a bunch of bands playing the same places at the same time, and that’s the music scene, then yes, it was a very alive moment in time.”

Have you subsequently become friendlier with the other artists?

“Totally,” says Banks. “We’re all friends with various members of The Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I work with Aaron from Liars and we’re all good friends with TV On The Radio, so yeah, there’s a lot of connectivity nowadays.”

PREVIOUS GREAT SCENES

As noted in Meet Me In The Bathroom, there was plenty of hard partying in the scene, with Interpol doing their fair share.

“I think it took its toll, sure,” says Paul. “I got out from the partying scene when I had to, which was around ’06. (Laughs) So I think it was done well and thoroughly, and before it really caught up with me to the point it was gonna derail things, I got on top of it. One of the things that gave me some pause shortly before I stopped partying, was when I walked into a rehearsal space on Ludlow Street, underneath Max Fish.

“For some reason, I walked in there in the middle of a late night and I was super fucked-up. Jaleel Bunton from TV On The Radio was there. I knew him and liked him, because he worked in a coffee shop across the street from my college when I was a freshman in NYU. I’d also gone to see his bands before he was even in TV On The Radio, so I really admired him. I remember he just looked at me and saw how fucked up I was, and I just saw this shadow cross his face, like, ‘Jesus Christ!’

“I remember feeling embarrassed for myself, like, ‘Shit, Jaleel thinks I’m a fucking tool.’ Who knows, he might have just been thinking, ‘Oh shit, I left my keys at home.’ But I took it he was looking at me like, ‘You’re a fuck-up, dude.’ It served to help get me sober at that time.”

The final chapter of Goodman’s book is titled ‘The Last Rock Stars’, and as it stands, the noughties NYC movement is indeed the last great rock scene. Will we see another one?

“Well, who knows?” Paul considers. “I think music is changing a lot with social media. You have Instagrammers who are like comedic personalities, but they have big music careers based off 20-second clips, which I myself have enjoyed and shared. That’s the new person getting a profile in Rolling Stone. It’s interesting and a new form of creativity – the next generation of fans is responding to music differently.

“Especially as we start to contend with the idea of, ‘Did humans even make that music?’, I feel the next generation of kids may well want to see artists who play their instruments live. They could well be attracted to artists who write their own music, and who perform with expertise and technical prowess.

“You might find they’ll go, ‘I wanna go see somebody play guitar. And I wanna see four dudes, or women or whatever the case is, who wrote songs together. I want to see that spectacle.’ So who the fuck knows? Maybe guitar solos are going to be super-cool again in five years and rock bands will thrive. You never know.”

A big barrier to another great rock scene flowering is the exorbitant cost of living in cities, which is now simply beyond most young people. Currently, it would be impossible for a group of young musicians to live in Manhattan, and replicate previous great scenes we saw in the city, not only in the noughties, but also the ’70s and ’80s.

“I mean, true,” says Paul. “Well, let’s see. Maybe you can’t live in lower Manhattan, but you can live in some part of Brooklyn, or this or that. I’m not saying it’s easy, but I don’t think a life in the arts has ever been easy. But agreed – maybe these things move more suburban or to deeper parts of Brooklyn, I don’t know. I think about Sam, though, who moved to New York and had a gas-burner and 50 bucks.

“He just found his way, and there are always some people who just make it happen somehow. I was more privileged than that, so I can’t speak on it, but I know the Sams of the world did it the hard way in the big city.”

BIG INFLUENCE

The previous time I spoke to Banks, I mentioned how Interpol’s lyrical focus on mood and atmosphere – rather than a specific narrative – reminded me of the work of David Lynch, the cult filmmaker celebrated for classics like Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and the TV series Twin Peaks. As such, I wonder if I can take credit for the band’s eventual collaboration with Lynch at Coachella in 2011, which saw the director provide some typically creepy visuals for the track ‘Lights’.

“I think it was maybe more that you picked up on an influence that was already there,” chuckles Banks. “Because I was very into David Lynch from the beginning – it was one of those things we were all into. In 1997/98, my roommate in New York had Twin Peaks on VHS and I was heavily into it. So yeah, our music is definitely Lynchian, it has that kind of fragmentary style and dream logic.”

How did the collaboration come about?

“At some point, we must have reached out to his people and we had a meeting with David Lynch,” recalls Banks. “It was maybe once or twice at his home studio in LA. He was a lovely guy and just really up for it. I think he just remembered we were that band of fellows who liked his coffee and had a good spirit about us when we hung out with him.

“So when we followed up a couple of years later and said, ‘Hey, would you like to do this collaboration?’, he was up for it. He’s just an open, creative, artistic individual. I think Sam and his then-wife maybe spent some time with him too, and had some coffee at one point. Unfortunately, I never got to hang too in-depth with him, but I think he just liked the vibe.”

I’m a bit shocked when Paul says he hasn’t watched the 2017 series Twin Peaks: The Return, which even featured a series of classic musical performances – most famously from Nine Inch Nails – and is perhaps Lynch’s crowning achievement, but hopefully the frontman will be acquainted with its surreal genius at some point. Returning to Interpol’s early days in New York, I believe the band’s distinctive sharp-suited look was influenced by their attendance at mod nights in the city, where – unusually for the US – Britpop heavyweights Suede and Pulp were strongly in vogue.

“Yeah, for sure,” says Banks. “Another influence on the look was The Make-Up: their singer Ian Svenonious was rocking a suit and tie. We were mindful of the visual aesthetic. If you’re going to be a rock band, you gotta look the part, man. It’s a requisite. When I was younger, I’d shop in thrift stores for clothes. And then, once we had a bit of success, we worked a lot with tailor named Craig Robinson – we were all sporting his custom stuff.”

Touching on other influences, on the original Antics tour, Interpol were in the habit of closing with Bright Lights number ‘Roland’, a thumping rocker which – like a lot of the band’s material at the time – delved into the darker, seamier side of New York, in a manner reminiscent of cult Last Exit To Brooklyn and Requiem For A Dream author Hubert Selby Jr.

“Yeah, okay, interesting,” muses Banks. “I think that was a feel we were going for. There was also a friend of mine, a screenwriter named Mauricio Katz, who was in the School of Visual Arts in New York at the time, who had a short film that inspired ‘Roland’. I can’t remember exactly what it was about, but it was called The Hand That Squeezes. He’s not really known in the music scene now, he writes in Hollywood, but as a peer, he was a big influence on me artistically.”

David Lynch

HUGE DOOBIE

Now 46, Banks currently lives in Berlin with his family, having previously been in a high-profile relationship with supermodel Helena Christensen. Around that same time, Interpol also played a number of major support slots for U2 on the Irish band’s blockbuster 360 tour, with the New York boys having first played with Bono and co. on their 2005/06 Vertigo excursion.

“That was crazy,” says Paul. “I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of walking out to an enormous, mind-numbing crowd, and being in a situation where they could kill us with 10 steps forward. We’d be washed away in a sea of people. There’s something very awe-inspiring and exciting about it that I’ve always enjoyed. That maybe is a bit of a dark spin on it, but it’s more that there’s this mass of people, and that we get to – I guess it’s as simple as entertain them.

“There’s something very special about it, but it also feels like there’s something very ancient about it. Maybe it’s not trial by fire – but when there’s that many people standing there, you better show up and do your fucking job! There’s something very invigorating about that I’ve always enjoyed. Their audiences were very kind us, so it was good.”

Did you get on with U2?

“We did, they were lovely guys, very generous and hospitable. Also, I know Bono outside of that experience a bit from an earlier phase in my life. I haven’t seen him in years now, but I know him and his family, and they’re really lovely people.”

Would you like to have attended U2’s Sphere residence in Las Vegas?

“I would,” Paul affirms. “Of their whole catalogue, Achtung Baby was an album that I was way into at the time. I think ‘The Fly’ is my favourite U2 song, and that record actually had a big influence on me. And I love the concept of the Sphere – to smoke a huge doobie and go see a show there would be a lot of fun.”

Finally, I enquire what it was like for Paul to collaborate with Wu-Tang Clan genius, RZA, on the 2016 album, Anything But Words, which the duo released under the name Banks & Steelz.

“It was inspiring and super-fun,” he enthuses. “I loved working with RZA and all the collaborators we had join us, like Ghostface, Method Man, Kool Keith and Masta Killa. It was awesome man, it was really a great time making that and I hope we get back to make some more of it soon. RZA’s a very wise and kind person. He’s a very happy, sociable guy, very outgoing. He’s a real pleasure to hang out with and a very smart dude.”

• Interpol play 3Arena, Dublin on November 10.