Four years on from the release of their fifth full-length offering El Pinto, New York trio Interpol are back with studio album number six. It's called Marauder, it's out today, and here's everything you need to know about it...
Four years on from the release of their fifth full-length offering El Pinto, New York trio Interpol are back with studio album number six. It's called Marauder, it's out today, and here's everything you need to know about it...
A little background...
After the release of their fourth, self-titled album in 2010 and the departure of founding member Carlos Dengler, Interpol regrouped as a three-piece and delivered their fifth album El Pinto in 2014, scoring their third top 10 album in the UK as well as back home in the US.
Work on its follow-up began in the autumn of 2016 and by October the band were already rehearsing new material for the album. In January the following year, Interpol announced a projected release date of summer 2018, but work on the new album was halted for an anniversary tour of their 2002 debut album Turn on the Bright Lights, resuming recording after the tour wrapped in October last year.
In May the band began dropping cryptic clues which led to a set of coordinates pointing to a mysterious June event Mexico City, something of a stronghold of the band's fans (Mexico's administrative capital happens to be the place with their highest concentration of listeners on streaming services). The event turned out to be both a press conference for the new album and the partial setting for a new video for new song 'The Rover' orchestrated by Narcos director Gerardo Naranjo.
Who's producing it?
Despite having self-produced their last two albums, for their sixth studio LP the band have recuited Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev producer Dave Fridmann. His long list of production credits also includes work for the likes of Weezer, The Cribs, Tame Impala and masters of the mind-bending music video OK Go.
Any special guests?
Nope. Interpol aren't usually the types to rope in a laundry list of collaborators and it's just the three of the remaining members on their latest record.
What does it sound like?
If Interpol have a trademark sound it's perhaps best characterised by the juxtaposition of the spiky, angular guitar riffs which often drive their songs and the haunting, sometimes mournful baritone of their frontman and chief songwriter Paul Banks.
On Marauder it's broadly more of the same in that regard, although musically speaking the new album generally feels more upbeat than its predecessor, but the vibe of the albums songs is often cut across by Banks' often oblique lyrics, which on Marauder seem preoccupied with the idea of a life – and perhaps a nation - spinning out of control. The album's artwork, featuring the former US attorney general to President Nixon, also seems to speak to this idea and however indirect some of the lyrics might be, the themes of recklessness and complacency featured in songs like 'It Probably Matters' seems more than coincidental.
Does it deliver?
Six albums in, there are signs on songs like lead-off single 'The Rover' that the band have a desire to experiment a little more; with their last three albums all enjoying a top 10 chart position on both sides of the Atlantic they're not messing to much with that winning formula or reinventing any wheels here, but there's plenty on Marauder for fans of the band to enjoy getting their teeth into.
Marauder is available in hmv stores now.
