Lately, as far as music is concerned, I've been pretty much going back to my earlier life of indie/alternative bands and beyond all the stuff I've been rehashing, I'm becoming familiar with Interpol. I guess these guys showed up on the radar just after I stopped monitoring it but it's a good thing I'm picking it all up now. It does have the Joy Division vibe (of whom I listened to the "Substance" compilation earlier today and enjoy it immensely) but I think they totally have an identity of themselves.

As usually happens, I was going through some online stuff about the band and a Pitchfork interview with vocalist Paul Banks came up. At some point he says:

You can't just imitate and keep coming up with ideas. You have to be tapping into something that's pure and unconscious in yourself or you'll have no career. You've got nothing to draw from. So the idea of starting a band because of Nirvana and thereby trying to sound like Nirvana is totally not the case. Nor is it the case a lot of times when people talk about a band's influences. Anybody that's in a band probably has millions of fucking influences and loves music so much that they're totally cross-genre and don't say, "I only listen to this." That's for non-musicians to say: "I only listen to this or that type of music." I think musicians love all music, or at least that's my case. Neil Young and Crazy Horse was a huge influence, folk music-- fucking Leonard Cohen-- those were all big influences. Jane's Addiction was a big influence. But at no point did I ever say, "I'll chemically fuse these sounds together and some kind of concept and develop a band sound as a result of that." Our band's sound is developed out of the four of us influencing each other.

Quoted for truth. Incidentally I doubt my musical abilities but I've been claiming exactly this for so long that I can't really understand people who only listen to a single style of music. For me, that would be a very scary place to be trapped in. But to each his own, so I'm not complaining and everyone is entitled to listen to whatever the fuck they enjoy listening.

Just a thought. Sucks that there's no tickets left for Interpol in Lisbon next month. Serves me right for not waking up earlier. Metaphorically speaking.