Interpol's Paul Banks Talks "Sacrifice," "Togetherness" Around New Album

Any veteran musical act intent on maintaining or building upon its success starts looking for a new angle after a while. 

So for Interpol's sixth studio album, and second as a trio, the band wanted to feel like it was doing something different. Singer/bassist Paul Banks tells Q104.3's Out of the Box with Jonathan Clarke that while the band was excited about working with producer Dave Fridmann (Weezer, The Flaming Lips, OK Go, Baroness) for the first time, the most significant aspect of the Marauder sessions was the locale.

Rather than recording in the band members' hometown of New York City, Interpol schlepped all the way to Buffalo, NY, to live and record together over a period of about five months.  

"We had made a few records just here locally, where you can kind of pop into the studio, do your thing and then go home for the evening," Banks explains. "You're not necessarily there when someone else is doing, like, a percussion overdub when you're working here [at home] in the city." 

The excitement of recording an album can lose its luster when it's treated like a day job. For a band that tours as often as Interpol does, committing to recording an entire album more than 350 miles from home was significant. The result was an immersive experience for the band members that Banks believes paid off on tape.   

"When you're in a house outside of Buffalo and there's nowhere to go, that just meant we were all there for every moment of making this record — even when you might not need to be there," he continued. "And I think that gave us a really good vibe between us as musicians. I think that was a really good thing for us at this point in our career — to really just double-down on togetherness and sacrifice some comfort...We sacrificed for our art." 

The back-to-its-roots approach wasn't only evident in the making of Marauder; the music video for "The Rover" was recorded in Banks' old hometown of Mexico City, Mexico. 

Banks says his band has a special connection Mexico City for the way it embraced Interpol early on. He says it's the city where he was introduced to indie rock as a teen, and the band thought it was a perfect location for the ambitious video (which you can watch below).

"...[All] these moving parts came together and we actually, sort of, hijacked the press conference in a way to have the character from the video interrupt it," Banks explains. "No one at the press conference knew why this guy was barging in. And then when the video dropped you realized, 'Oh, that interruption to the press conference was just part of the video.' A lot of creative people came together and executed this elaborate venture and it actually worked. 

Check out the full interview above!

Get tour dates and more information about Marauder here

Keep up with all things Interpol by following the band on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

Watch the video for "The Rover" below:


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