Michael's Number Ones: "Evil" by Interpol

DATE	WEEKS
March 5, 2005	1

When grunge went supernova in the early 90s, record labels scoured the country for any band that could deliver a fraction of the success any of the Seattle bands delivered. Boston gave us Belly. Cleveland gave us Nine Inch Nails. San Diego gave us Stone Temple Pilots. Chicago gave us Smashing Pumpkins. Florida gave us a horde of post-grunge bands of varying degrees of quality.

Surprisingly, New York City didn't have much to offer. The city that brought Ramones and Blondie and Television and Talking Heads to the world was pretty barren on the alternative rock scene when the 90s rolled around. There were some singer-songwriter types like Suzanne Vega lurking around the edges, and Marcy Playground scored an out of nowhere smash with their 1997 single "Sex and Candy". But the music that defined New York in the 90s was hip-hop: The Notorious B.I.G., Wu-Tang Clan, Jay-Z, Nas, among many others.

By the turn of the century, something was brewing at the margins in New York. After 9/11, people and businesses wanted to support the city, and that apparently included record labels. What they found was a fertile bench of bands that brought new ideas to the table. While none of them may have gone on to be pop superstars, they all came to be standard bearers for what came to be known as indie rock, a term even more nebulous than alternative rock.

I was a little late to pick up on this, and moved out of New York before I even had a chance to see any of these bands for myself. When I did experience any of these bands, it was only from whatever broke through on the radio or MTV2. Interpol had made enough of an impression on me that when their second album Antics came out in 2004, I gave them more than their fair share of attention. While their only #1 song on my chart may not be among my favorites from them today, it pretty accurately represented the weirdness of what was going on in New York's music scene. It didn't hurt that it was also really catchy.

New Yorkers can be quite provincial when it comes to being a New Yorker, at least if you believe what you read on Reddit. Immigrants have been defining the culture in the city since its founding, but apparently people from Ohio or Kansas can go fuck themselves. (This really amuses me since my wife is from Ohio and sometimes I consider her more of a New Yorker than myself.) So I guess I was a little surprised to learn that Paul Banks, the lead singer of Interpol, was actually born in England, in a town in Essex called Clacton-on-Sea. His father worked for a car manufacturer, which meant he moved frequently as a child. His family moved to Michigan when he was three, then Spain, New Jersey, and Mexico City.

The founder of Interpol, Daniel Kessler, was also born in England. Kessler studied at New York University and approached anyone who would listen about forming a band before the Queens-born Carlos Dengler agreed to start one. One day, Kessler was in the East Village when he ran into Banks, who he had previously met at a learning program in Paris, and who was also going to NYU. Banks joined as a guitarist and singer. Sam Fogarino came on as the drummer and Interpol was born.

Interpol self-released a bunch of EPs between 1998 and 2001 as they worked the club scene in Manhattan and Brooklyn. They even recorded a John Peel Session for the BBC in 2001. They sent demos to Gerard Cosloy of New York indie label Matador Records where they eventually signed after some back and forth. In August 2002, they released their debut album Turn On the Bright Lights.

Turn On the Bright Lights is a fucking masterpiece. The layers and textures on the album let you dissolve into them. Banks' stentorian vocals feel cold, yet work seamlessly within the instrumentation, fitting in a grand tradition among the likes of Robert Smith or Ian Curtis. The first single from the album was "PDA". The animated video directed by Christopher Mills got some heavy play on MTV2 and the song very nearly made my top 40. It sounded exactly what I was into at the time, yet unlike anything getting heavy radio play.

There's a bunch of memorable songs on the album, such as "Untitled", "Obstacle 1" and "Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down". Unsurprisingly, my favorite song from the album is the melancholy dirge "NYC". That song is a goddamn showstopper. It's the type of song that sounds just right at 3AM when you're staggering home alone from a bar in Greenwich Village or Williamsburg. As you may have guessed, I'm a sucker for almost any song that makes New York a central character. But "NYC" has to be among the best of those songs.

Turn On the Bright Lights got critical acclaim across the board. This was the dawn of the blog age, when websites like Pitchfork and Stylus Magazine began to be as influential as Rolling Stone or the late Village Voice. The Village Voice ranked the album at #15 on their year-end Pazz & Jop poll, even though critic Robert Christgau was one of the few to give it an unfavorable review.

Interpol stood in stark contrast to what was dominating the airwaves on alternative radio in the early 2000s. The only New York band to make any inroads on the radio at first was The Strokes. Their garage band sound felt a lot more refreshing compared to the nu metal and post-grunge that was in constant rotation at the time. Even then, they were lumped together with The White Stripes, The Hives, and The Vines as "the bands", as if having "the" at the beginning of their name was the indicator they played more straightforward rock than other bands getting airplay.

The Strokes' debut single "Last Nite" made some enormous waves, getting as high as #5 on Billboard's alternative chart, but it never caught on with me. However, I really liked the follow-up single "Hard to Explain", and that got as high as #4 on my chart in 2002. (The Strokes' biggest hit on my chart, 2005's "Juicebox", peaked at #2.)

The buzz generated by Turn On the Bright Lights and other New York City bands meant that Interpol's next album was going to get a lot more attention. Antics was released in September of 2004, and it does many of the same things as Turn On the Bright Lights, but feels more refined and confident. Paul Banks has even called this his favorite Interpol album. The album doesn't land quite the same way with me, but it's still a good listen. The first single from the album was "Slow Hands", and I was very excited to hear KNDD giving it tons of airplay. It was the first Interpol song to make Billboard's alternative chart, and peaked at #15. On my chart, it got all the way to #5 near the end of 2004. If you ever needed to introduce someone to what Interpol is about, "Slow Hands" is a good place to start.

"Evil" wound up being the second single from Antics. Paul Banks' lyrics are rarely ever straightforward, so what it's about has been subject to wide interpretation. I never really thought that hard about them before writing this column The most popular theory, based on the line "Rosemary/Heaven restores you in life", is that it's based on notorious British serial killers Fred and Rosemary West, and written from Fred's point of view before committing suicide prior to his trial. I won't go into detail about their crimes; apparently Netflix just released a documentary about the Wests in May if you really want to know more about them.

Banks has always denied they were the subjects of the song. Perhaps he's lying because he doesn't want to seem like he's glorifying the Wests' crimes, or perhaps music journalists just ran with the story because it's a lot easier than saying they don't know what the song is actually about. My theory is that it's probably not based on any one murderer or criminal. There's enough lore about serial killers out there that you can create a Frankenstein's monster through any form of media.

Banks' narrator tells Rosemary she's coming with him through the aging, the fearing, the strife. Right will take her places, maybe to the beach. And when her friends come crying, she'll tell them now her pleasure's set upon slow release. There's also someone named Sandy that shows up in the chorus? Calling the song "Evil" leads to the assumption it's about something fucked up. I suppose I could come up with some interpretation that makes Rosemary either the victim or the killer in this song. Honestly, I don't know what the fuck Banks is talking about. But Banks' lyrics are so esoteric I feel like I'm just wasting internet space going on about them.

What works in the song's favor is Carlos Dengler's bass, which opens the song and sucks you in. The song is a lot more jangly than most other Interpol songs. Many of Interpol's songs can be compared to new wave titans Joy Division, particularly due to Paul Banks' deep baritone. But "Evil" reminds me a lot more of fellow Manchester indie behemoth The Smiths. Morrissey never found a grisly subject he thought wouldn't make a good song, but with The Smiths, you know what you're getting into, and Morrissey sold that stuff a lot more effortlessly.

Perhaps the irony of "Evil" is that it's Interpol's most pop-friendly song. That probably made the difference in 2005 when it knocked "Mr. Brightside" from #1 on my chart, but today I don't consider that as much of a strength. "Evil" only reached #24 on Billboard's alternative chart, yet today it's their most streamed song on Spotify with over 185 million plays.

Another thing that made the difference was the music video, which got a lot of run on MTV2. It was directed by Charlie White, a Philadelphia-based photographer whose works are highly staged and conceptual. It opens with the aftermath of car crash, with victims being treated by EMTs. Among them is a boy portrayed by a life-size puppet. The puppet lip syncs the lyrics of the song as he travels in an ambulance to a hospital's operating room. In the operating room he starts dancing on the gurney. It's a very memorable video to see come on TV, but goddamn if the uncanny valley the puppet resides in wasn't some nightmare fuel.

The puppet wound up being nicknamed "Norman" by Interpol fans, but was lost soon after the video premiered. It wound up changing hands several times until John Kolbek purchased it and restored it to its original condition. Now he uses it to host videos on his Youtube page that are gloriously weird and make a pretty appropriate use of Norman.

Interpol jumped to a major label to release their third album Our Love to Admire in 2007. The first single was "The Heinrich Manuever", which hits all the sweet spots you'd expect an Interpol song to hit. It peaked at #5 on my chart, and wound up as their biggest hit on the alternative chart, reaching #11. Our Love to Admire is also Interpol's highest charting album, debuting at #4, but it failed to reach Gold status, moving not even half as many copies as either of their first two albums.

Unhappy with their major label experience, Interpol returned to Matador Records to released their self-titled fourth album. The first single from it, "Barricade" got to #17 on my chart. Carlos Dengler left the band after the album was finished, and Banks took over bass duties for the band. They got one more top 10 on my chart with 2014's "All the Rage Back Home" from their fifth album El Pintor. That one got to #10.

Interpol have comfortably settled into indie rock elder statesmen status. Last year, they played a free concert in Mexico City that drew 160,000 people. Apparently, Interpol are really huge in Mexico? They can sell out Madison Square Garden any time they please and make gorgeous music videos. I loved the one they did for "If You Really Love Nothing" from 2018's Marauder. Kristen Stewart basically does whatever the fuck she wants in a restaurant while she and the band are filmed with incredible cinematography. (That one peaked at #23 on my chart.) Paul Banks has done a couple solo albums and side projects over the years. Banks has made no secret of his love of hip-hop and in 2016, he collaborated with Wu-Tang Clan member RZA on the project Banks & Steelz. Their only album Anything But Words featured appearances from Ghostface Killah and Method Man and future Number Ones artist Florence Welch. Good stuff!

Interpol wound up being the first of the New York indie bands to get to the top of my chart but they wouldn't be the last. The artists that came out of the 2000s New York indie scene have had amazing durability, and cemented Brooklyn as an epicenter of culture and creativity, albeit sacrificing affordability in the process. Without artists like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or The National or TV on the Radio, we probably don't get Japanese Breakfast or Big Thief or Nation of Language, all of whom will eventually appear in this column. Interpol, on the other hand, likely won't be appearing here again, but their place in the firmament of indie rock is quite secure. Nothing evil about that.

EXTRAS

One of the reasons Grey's Anatomy got such a foothold on American culture was the show's use of music early on. Here's "Evil" soundtracking a scene from a 2005 episode:

I had never heard of the Anchorage band The Modern Savage before writing this column, but they covered "Evil" for their 2017 album Unwilling Participants. Pretty cool to hear the song sung by a female vocalist. Here's the impressively choreographed video they made for it:

And here's "Evil" soundtracking a 2020 episode from the CW series The 100: