Interpol frontman Paul Banks has admitted he viewed the band’s early-’00s, NYC contemporaries, like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and particularly The Strokes, as direct rivals. Speaking recently in an interview, the frontman compared the situation to a group of competing web companies trying to out-do each other.
“I still wish I was more bro-y with those guys,” said Banks of the popular garage revivalists during a new interview with The Guardian. “But it wasn’t like: ‘Hey my buddies the Strokes are doing really great’, it was more like, ‘Wait a minute, who the fuck is making music this good? And they’re blowing up.'”
“The Strokes were apparently hanging out in exactly the same places I was but I didn’t know any of them until everybody in England was, like, up their ass. Had never heard of them doing a gig,” he continued. Both Interpol and The Strokes came onto the scene around the turn of the century, having earned devoted followings in New York City. Both bands released their debut albums between 2001 and 2002.
“[YYYs’] Nick Zinner knew people in my band, and he was part of a scene. But if you think of a lot of internet companies rising up at the same time, they don’t think of themselves as all in it together. They think, ‘Oh my god, did you hear about those guys doing super-well? We’ve got to work on our craft.'”
Recently in the country, Interpol are gearing up to release their long-awaited fifth studio album, El Pintor. In his review of the album for Music Feeds, Tom Williams praised the album as a “desperately needed return to form” for the group, remarking that the band “sound like they’re having fun again.”
Watch: Interpol – All The Rage Back Home
