Interpol singer Paul Banks has been playing solo sets under the pseudonym Julian Plenti for a while now it seems. Now Matador records has announced he's to put out a record proper. Here's three old live tracks as a taster.
Julian Plenti - 'Cellophane'
Julian Plenti - 'The Larynx That You Have'
Julian Plenti - 'On The Esplanade'
Details are sketchy but these come from deep inside an old issue of small-time culture magazine Beekiller. From February 2002 in fact, making it at least 6 months before Interpol unleashed
Turn On The Bright Lights on the world. Back then they described him pretentiously - but pleasantly no-name - as:
The insouciantly louche downtown songwringer explores his
moody-brooding side in these beautifully unbalanced sketches, flashing
a sneaky sense of humor from behind a mouthful of poisonous daggers.
Suffice to say I'm sure seven years down the track the tunes will sound quite different, but as Matador's press release says, "some of the songs were written
more than ten years ago." Maybe these are some of them.
As far as we can tell these were recorded by one of the bands on the bill on the night of Banks' show. While the voice is unmistakably Banks, it's disarming at first to hear it croon over crudely strummed acoustic guitar. Still, those always delightfully off lyrics are on display. (At the end of 'Cellophane' he sings
"There's cellophane between me and the outside / And I don't think I'm staying fresh" - WTF?)
Best of the three is the fingerpicked mood piece 'On the Esplanade' (which he pronounces "Esplan-
aid' for some reason), which muses - of course - on emotional disconnection and skewed love. He's consistent if anything.
You can hear more recent Interpol-like snippets over at
julianplenti.com now. The album, titled '
Julian Plenti Is...Skyscraper', is coming out August 4th on Matador.