INTERPOL

As the New Yorkers set out on the anniversary tour for 2004's classic second album, Antics, Guitarist met Daniel Kessler to hear about early rejection, the magic of hollowbodies, and why you won't catch him playing major chords

- Henry Yates

At the turn of the millennium – and not for the first time in rock history - there was nowhere cooler than New York City. For the hipsters rifling vinyl crates in the East Village thrift stores, the essential soundtrack was Is This It by The Strokes, all trash-can guitars and curled-lip anthems howled through a glitchy microphone. But in the wee small hours, when the city fell to ink and neon, Interpol came out to play.

Debuting in 2002 with Turn On The Bright Lights, these four sharp-suited shadowmen made music that sounded like rain on a coffin lid, with frontman Paul Banks' sombre proclamations met by the desolate, delay-clad riffing of Daniel Kessler. But it was 2004's follow-up, Antics, that stands as arguably Interpol's greatest work to date, its stately melancholia and sudden explosions of violence casting an enduring spell in the age of throwaway landfill indie.

As such, two decades and seven albums later, the still-questing band wound back the clock with the Antics anniversary tour. And when we visited the Bristol Beacon to meet Kessler - now an impeccably tailored 50 year old - we found him on the tightrope between past and present, debating how to balance his youthful gear choices and musicianship with the artist he has become.

What do you remember about the road to the Antics album?

"We'd been a band for five years. Nobody was really rushing to sign us. Plenty of record labels had rejected our demos, including the label we eventually signed to, Matador, who had rejected our first three demos. Antics really came on the heels of 2002's Turn On The Bright Lights: we never stopped between the two records. We were touring Bright Lights, then we got back to New York and went into a little rehearsal space in Brooklyn and we started writing