Interpol

The beetle was huge, nearly three inches long and almost as wide, a gorgeous lime-green specimen so iridescent it could’ve passed for a scarab. And it boldly buzzed around its domain—the gardens of a Glendale television studio—like a miniature wartime chopper, hovering in the faces of interlopers and even landing on their lapels or pant legs for further reconnaissance. Burly security men in the guard shack duck in fear when the insect drones past, although it’s a harmless offshoot of the June bug variety. But the beetle is so loud, it startles just about every person who crosses its path.

All except one. “Did you see that amazing green beetle?” Daniel Kessler excitedly inquires, as he emerges from the spacious soundstage where his art-pop outfit, Interpol, is filming its latest video. Ever since the band members arrived on the set that morning, the guitarist relates, they’d been repeatedly dive-bombed by the winged wonder, until it finally came to rest on Kessler’s pinstriped black dinner jacket. And it’s hard to tell who was more fascinated with the other—insect or axeman. “It looks like it’s some rare Japanese type—it just glistens,” he sighs. “And I don’t understand why it’s been hanging around with us all day. I assume that it just really likes people.”

Most folks would scamper shrieking to indoor safety (one of the guards, in fact, attempted to squash it with his shoe, but the beetle was just too fast for him). But the amateur Interpol entomologists recognized the innate beauty of the creature, and the wonder of those rare moments when art and nature overlap. Is there a future song hidden somewhere in this interaction? Who knows? shrugs Kessler. He’s taking a breather from the taping of “Slow Hands,” the first video/single from his band’s sophomore stunner Antics on Matador Records.

But one thing is certain: We’ve just experienced what—for lack of a better term—can be described as an “Interpol Moment”: a time when normal laws of the universe don’t apply, when strict social/artistic barriers break down and a receptive mind can glimpse inspirational visions from the other side. While many composers are content with the miasmic haze that permeates this existence, Kessler and his chief co-writer, singer/guitarist Paul Banks, work hard to make these Interpol Moments occur, machete-chopping through the fog to the magical green-beetle ephemera hidden within. Sound hokey? It’s not. Interpol is deadly serious about its craft, and if the rhythmic wing-flutter of some exotic species ends up providing a track’s missing musical link, so be it. As Banks and Kessler both assert in separate interviews, art is exactly where you find it.

Which is probably why Interpol caught the public’s ear—and imagination—with its elegiac 2002 debut, Turn On the Bright Lights. The record meshed Kessler’s staccato, Tom Verlaine-school fretwork with the melodic Joy Division-ish rhythm section of drummer Sam Fogarino and bassist Carlos Dengler. Banks—who swore he never followed any famed Factory Records groups—nevertheless vocally echoed the melancholy murmur of the late Ian Curtis, with some tinny Bernard Sumner tones around the edges. From its genesis in 1998, the band had a slick sartorial style; a la Bill Nelson’s brainy Be Bop Deluxe, Interpol members dressed in ’60s-chic shirts, suits and skinny ties—most of which, Banks boasted at the time, were purchased at a Big Apple thrift store where every item was $10 or less.