The sixth album from New York City legends Interpol is a truly evocative record.
The one thing that is very clear about 'Marauder' is how personable it is, and that shines through in its delivery and its sentiment.
Vocalist Paul Banks has said it’s an autobiographical release for him. In trying to interpret his bandmate’s thoughts and feelings with what he’s presented, lead guitarist Daniel Kessler has made 'Marauder' his own.
“It’s hard for me to compare this to other releases because I think they all have that quality, all with direct sentiment and all with correlation to, from my position, my soul in a weird way.
“It’s never conceptual, it’s always things I’m trying to share and trying to get to the bottom of inside of myself as far as emotion or expression goes.
"That being said I can say this record, it’s a deeply personal record all around. I think maybe it’s due to the time and where we’re all at collectively and certainly our individual paths.”
For Daniel, Interpol’s latest creation is honest and direct – is there ever a better policy? “I can’t say musically it’s straightforward,” he says.
“But it’s direct in the sense of how we wrote it, how we put it together and this is what came out of us.
“The way it sounds is one part working with such a great producer [Dave Fridmann], and the other part I think is the way it was sounding in our rehearsal room – very lively, very urgent, and very much something that was dying to get out of us.”
Those are very good words to ascribe to the album, but there’s also another – seductive. Seduction cloaks 'Marauder' like a warm coat and though Daniel says there was no concept there was a certain draw to its execution, like a siren on the rocks.
“I think you’re hitting upon something that is inherently part of our chemistry as a band,” he says in thought.
“Seduction is a really interesting word – I can’t speak for Paul in terms of lyrical content, with him there’s a natural seduction in his lyrics and delivery – but musically I think for me when I’m writing songs and coming to compositions on my own, I have to seduce myself into this sort of, this is pulling me in into wanting to pursue this direction, this emotional scene-setting, and from there it’s a transformative feeling in terms of what I’m getting out of it.
“It’s like songwriting and music in general, it’s good to have a little bit of selfishness in terms of you have to feed yourself first and foremost, you have to make yourself feel a certain way.”
It’s hard for Daniel to say exactly why and where 'Marauder' elicits its seduction, but he does say it’s a concept that is inherently in music. “In that sense when you get a trace of something new, it is in a weird way seducing you, making you want to go down that rabbit hole.
“It’s a little murky at first and you want to get a little closer and figure out, ‘What is it trying to make me say?’. Then you get there and there’s a peace. For me, it’s aspiring to find that peace, that calm.”
